text:
Watch party on 30 April! » « Do economists have even more hubris than physicists?
If I wrote this in a recommendation…
It would be recognized by all recipients as a sign that the subject was radioactive.
Thanks for the information, New York Times!
Politics, History, and Law
The Vicar (via Freethoughtblogs) says
Well, at least we finally found out why Biden hired Harvey Weinstein's spin doctor all those weeks ago.
bionichips says
I know your candidate lost and you are not happy with Biden but our choices – like it or not – are Biden or Trump. As Bernie said 4 years ago "A Trump presidency is unthinkable." And then the "Bernie bros" helped get Trump elected.
Are we doomed to repeat history? The Trump voters will enthusiastically turn out to vote. The evil forces are united – we are not. And sadly despite all of his shortcomings we are doomed for 4 more years of the unthinkable.
remyporter says
"Yes, our candidate has a history of inappropriate touching, but he's not Trump, so get in line Bernie Bros" isn't the winning argument you think it is. Don't blame the electorate, blame the institution: the Democratic party is not prepared to face Trump, and they've had four years to get ready, to learn some lessons from 2016 and 2018, to understand how Trump manipulates the media and how they can counter it.
And they simply haven't. I'll grudgingly vote for Biden. But I also predict, with regret, that Biden is going to lose, and it's not going to have anything to do with Sanders, with "Bernie Bros", with the progressive wing "defecting" or "sitting out" or whatever. It's going to be because the Democrats still have no idea how to deal with Trump. They're playing politics, and he's playing Reality TV, and Reality TV is consistently winning. Maybe, MAYBE, the nostalgia factor will put Biden over the top, but I wouldn't be gambling the presidency on people fondly remembering the Obama era, which is subjectively 40 years ago at this point.
(If Biden ran as Onion Article Biden, he'd win hands down, but running as Establishment Democrat Biden, he's got a long hill to climb)
chrislawson says
"We found no pattern of violence other than bruising, lacerations, and broken bones…"
"We found no pattern of fraud other than forged checks, missing receipts, and unaccountable wealth…"
"We found no pattern of food poisoning other than mass vomiting, diarrhoea, and rat droppings…"
I could write NYT tweets all day.
Great American Satan says
remy porter – my thoughts exactly and much more well said.
pick says
Biden is sexual predator in the same sense that Obama is not a born American. I gotta wonder who or what the Bernie supporters are really supporting. I think our otherwise proper sense of political or sexual appropriateness or correctness is being used to discredit Biden. Certainly Biden's Republican enemies don't care if he "hugs and kisses" (how terrible!!).
komarov says
Someone must have realised that "high standards" are easy to maintain when you're being held up against the GOP. Then they realised that things could be even easier and started digging for that carefree, fun-filled life. Next we will learn whether "Integrity" can be treated as a relative quality, too. Is Biden waffling made-up bullshit yet, as his counter-part is wont to do?
Biden is not just accused of a bit of "sick uncle groping" there's a credible rape accusation, as well. Everyone who was willing to say the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh needed to be taken seriously ought to be calling for equal seriousness regarding Biden.
@#10, komarov:
Biden has been telling lies at Trump speed for most of the past several months, but most people haven't been bothering to pay enough attention. I take it you missed such classics as "I marched for civil rights in the 60s" (Biden was pro-segregation, rather famously so) and "I got arrested trying to see Nelson Mandela" (he never even tried to see Nelson Mandela). And, of course, a slew of statements which are basically not provably lies but which are unlikely to the point of madness, like his claim that when he was a child (which would have been in the 1950s or possibly even the late 1940s — he was born in 1942) he and his father saw two gay men kissing in public.
The man is so full of feces he should be running for national sewer system, but apparently we're not permitted to even notice it.
littlejohn says
Oh, for pete's sake. We know what sort of touching and kissing is being discussed because we've seen in on television. Biden is one of those people — like my aunts when I was a child — who considered hugging and kissing part of a normal greeting. Of course some people, like me, don't care for all that touchy-feely stuff, but it isn't sexual assault. Our president, who has bragged about grabbing 'em by the pussy, is the only other candidate, and what he does really is sexual assault. What's being done to Biden on this front is pretty much what was done to Al Franken. And as with Franken, the worst damage was done by people who consider themselves Democrats. Grow up. Biden is literally the only alternative to Trump. Bernie supporter took the ball and went home in 2016. Are you going to do it again this year? If so, you're just as much to blame for Trump as the toothless yahoos in MAGA hats.
No, I think that comparing the Kavanaugh case and Biden case is false equivalence. What evidence and testimony there was added up to correspond to what was otherwise apparent to our own eyes.
Tara Read's story throws way too many red flags to ignore. It's extremely incongruent with what we think we know otherwise – Rebecca Watson claimed PZ groped her in an elevator. I wouldn't believe it.
wzrd1 says
@2, enjoy a second term of the god-king, Emperor Trump!
You failed to learn the last election's lesson about ratfucking the other leading candidate, enjoy me now refusing to hold my nose against grabby Joe's stench, enjoy Emperor Trump and every other turn I can find on the ballot.
I'll not be alone.
Maybe then, you and the DNC will fucking learn. If not, there are worse turds than him out there. Maybe that boy from Brazil…
This is me and my peers picking up the fucks we gave and dumping them into your lap.
Wait, what? No. Rebecca never claimed I groped her, and in fact, she didn't accuse anyone of groping her.
Reciting elevatorgate hyperbole is one of those things likely to get you banned here.
some bastard on the internet says
Wow, I never thought I'd say this, but I am glad I live in Utah. All of Utah's electoral votes went to Trump in 2016 and, despite his below-average popularity for a Republican, I don't expect that to change this year.
So, unless something wild happens like Mitt Romney endorsing Biden…
…sorry, I had to take a few minutes to stop laughing at that last sentence.
Anyway, I wonder if Monica Moorehead is running again?
numerobis says
Prediction: the NYT will spend way more ink trashing Biden than Trump, while endorsing him.
Steve Caldwell says
Jezebel ran this article a few days ago. The writer makes this observation and the article is worth checking out — here is a short quote from it:
Reade's story is both harrowing and credible, and she deserves to have her allegations taken seriously. But because of the ways in which her story has been mishandled, it's now possible that she's been set up for more vitriol—and for her story to be cravenly politicized, by both the left and the right.
https://jezebel.com/tara-reades-allegations-deserve-more-care-1842515308
There is a reason that Ronan Farrow and other journalists were so meticulous with their reporting and background investigating of Harvey Weinstein is that all concerned parties deserve that care when reporting this.
One of the worst ways to report this story is to casually throw it out on one's podcast with incomplete context, no follow-up, and no additional background research into the story.
But anyway: it's a microcosm of three choice Americans have. Very creepy rapey man, or slightly creepy rapey man. Very right-wing asshole, or slightly right-wing asshole. Was very racist and still is, or was very racist and is much less now. Etc.
Really the biggest political difference is that Trump wants to be king, whereas Biden still seems to believe in democracy.
oddie says
The only people to blame for the democratic lose to Trump is the Democratic Party. It soo much easier to blame scapegoats than to look at where you all fucked up. And shitting on Bernie supports is no way to get them on ur side. It didn't work in2016 and it won't work now.
kome says
The fatalist resignation of those who've fallen into thinking there are only 2 options is really destructive. It is possible that when a game is broken you can opt to not play it in favor of pursuing something else. Yes, that takes more time, yes that takes more effort, and yes it means that until you build a better, non-broken game to play that people still playing the broken game can mess things up even more, but that doesn't mean the only choice people have between Trump or Biden. The complete and total erosion of optimism or concern for the long-term that has resulted from the coordinated effort of the corporate-wing of the DNC and the entire GOP since the Buckley v. Valeo decision is how we got here. Vote downballot – go vote, absolutely! – but do not vote for Biden or Trump. You send a stronger message by not playing their game, and not playing by their rules, than by capitulating.
Whoa sorry, I didn't know I touched on anything! I thought I was making an absurd comparison for the sake of argument. Obviously nothing like that could happen because we know PZ's character and Rebecca's character is good otherwise, that's all. Sorry if anyone took that seriously. I don't see Bernie being of the kind of character that would do untoward things either. Truly should have kept my mouth shut.
LeftSidePositive says
We desperately need ranked-choice voting. I stand by what I said that "Oh, we'll just sit this out and punish the Democrats!" continues to be a recipe for disaster and demonstrably has let the Democratic party move more rightward, especially on economic and foreign policy. There really is no alternative in the present system but to vote for Biden, and to make sure all our friends do too. But I am fucking mad about it. I would like to be able to vote for Elizabeth Warren, then Kamala Harris, then Kirsten Gillibrand, then Julian Castro, then Bernie Sanders, then basically the entire rest of the Democratic field that isn't Michale Bloomberg or Tulsi Gabbard, and THEN Biden as the last of my rankings but at least not Trump. I'm so damn sick of playing strategic 11-dimensional chess at what the electorate imagines other voters will vote for. I imagine most Democratic voters aren't really enthused for Biden, but voted for him 1) because they want the Obama days back, or 2) they believe he's "safer" to beat Trump. And I'm fucking scared. I don't think #1 was good enough to prevent the creeping fascism of GOP, and I don't believe #2 is true, especially once the mainstream media pulls all its false equivalence horserace stops out. But I can't pretend this can be laid at the foot of some all-powerful, conniving Democratic party. The Democratic primary voters chose this, and by a large margin. I'm frustrated as hell, and disappointed, but if progressive politics were really as attainable as people wanted to believe, they could have swept the primary. If people really wanted something better they wouldn't have cared who Amy Klobuchar endorsed. After all, the Republican base wanted Trump, and he EASILY overcame all the GOP's machinations to try to diminish him in the primaries. But I'd like to be able to vote for what I really want, have a safety backup, and not have to compromise away most of my desired platform for other people's idea of what's possible.
#21, would you like to consider that Biden actually won the primary? What was "the Democratic Party" supposed to do? Install your favorite just because? And yes, I'm fucking mad at Bernie supporters from 2016. Not all of them, but definitely the ones who perpetuated complete lies about the primary process and Seth Rich, threw dollar bills at Clinton's motorcade, who encouraged their supporters not to vote or vote Stein. Those supporters—and Bernie himself by refusing to call them out and insisting on staying in the race after he lost and repeatedly trashing Clinton's integrity AFTER HE HAD MATHEMATICALLY LOST—had a major effect on depressing young voter turnout. You need to own that. You need to understand that a lot of people who like your policies were not going to vote for Bernie this time around because of how he—not just his supporters, but HE and his employed campaign staff—behaved in 2016. And stop blaming "the Democratic Party" like it chose for you. You couldn't get your message to a majority of voters. Own it, and learn to do better next time.
harryblack says
People lamenting 'toothless yahoos' are part of the reason populists like Trump can do so well in mobilising those demographics with a sense of grievance. So good job snobs!
Also love how people cite the Franken issue as if it was some grave injustice and try to wave off Joes fucking blatantly creepy behaviour as just an old fashioned style of engagement. Newsflash- You arent the only one with touchy feely relatives. We know the difference when we see it.
Thats before getting to the actual rape. Take your 'red flags' and shove them because the way Reade is being disregarded is nothing short of utterly disgusting.
The fact is that the Dems have picked a candidate about whom not a single good true thing can be said (dont worry though, he says plenty of untrue things about himself and had to drop out once before because of it).
There are two reasons to vote for him though. Not for the lesser of two racist rapists but firstly he is unlikely to start a war due to a mood swing and secondly, if Ginsberg dies under a republican administration then its goodbye to abortion rights and anything but conservative reading of the law for decades to come. There are no other reasons but I think those are pretty good.
If they arent good enough then I understand. The plus side is that we have been told for months that Biden has a better chance than Sanders so I assume that means he doesnt need all the people he was obviously going to put off.
#22. There are only two options. It's not fatalism—it's fucking math, and it is irresponsible in the extreme for you to pretend otherwise. Here, why don't you refresh your memory on how first-past-the-post voting actually works:
But this is what we should try to change (hat tip, Maine, and organizations like FairVote), rather than just ignoring the immediate consequences of our actions and pretending the electoral landscape is vastly different than it is.
What YOU are doing is capitulating to Republican rule by refusing to vote Democrat. It doesn't help, it doesn't "send a message": literally NO ONE IN DC FUCKING CARES about your conscientious abstaining. All abstaining does is show you don't want to matter. That is the only message you're sending, and candidates learn not to bother catering to your concerns because you are too risky a voter (keep in mind, there are other voters who don't want what you want and who might be turned off by your preferred policies. They're wrong, but they exist, and any rational candidate is more likely to cater to them because they are more reliable voters than you are).
Also, by not playing the game you are not challenging the game IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER. You are just enabling the worst players in the game through your selfishness and irresponsibility. Remember how awful Citizens United was? Wouldn't have happened if Gore had chosen those SCOTUS justices, but he couldn't do that because of self-defeating, purity-voting, Naderite idiots. Ditto Shelby vs Holder. Ditto the absolute travesty that SCOTUS just inflicted on Wisconsin. There are real consequences to refusing to "play the game" and you are actively giving away power, and you refuse to learn. More importantly, people other than you are getting hurt. The most vulnerable Americans and immigrants are suffering horribly for the sake of relatively well-off, privileged lefties' purity. Think of who you are throwing to the wolves by refusing to help them to the degree you can.
And even more importantly: THERE IS NO DOWNSIDE TO VOTING FOR PRESIDENT. None. Nada. Zilch. You will feel slightly annoyed at your choices, but that's it. There is NO either/or when it comes to voting for president AND you can also petition for state ballot initiatives about Ranked-Choice Voting. You can ALSO march. You can ALSO write/call your representatives. You can ALSO stage acts of civil disobedience. All of these things will be MORE impactful if you are a reliable voter. No one in power cares how many people show up to a protest if none of them are going to vote, and they can use an increasingly rightwing judiciary that a Republican president will insist on and a suite of punitive Executive Orders that said president can enforce to make it even harder for you to have the freedom to demonstrate, and for your vote to overcome voter suppression and gerrymandering.
Not voting is capitulation, no matter what you tell yourself. Think about all the people who will die from a Republican president and who would survive a Democratic one AND VOTE, even if your choice is shitty and uninspiring. Do it for your fellow Americans AND work to change the system. It's not either/or, you make it harder for activists down the road with your inaction, AND the actual "message" you are sending through not voting is "I'm an easily duped imbecile whose preferences don't matter and who is not worth the opportunity cost of outreach." Do better.
More Sanders supporters went out and voted for Clinton in 2016 than Clinton supporters in 2008 went out and voted for Obama. Progressives aren't the reason Democrats keep losing to Republicans, no matter how much you blame them to absolve yourself of the basic responsibility of holding the DNC accountable for constantly backing loser corporatists. Democrats lose to Republicans when they appeal to centrism or moderation. When they chase imaginary qualities like "electability" and ignore substantive policy. When they value "reaching across the aisle" and "working with" politicians who think rape doesn't happen or that gay people are diseased or that brown people are just genetically inferior to white people more than they value equality or justice.
You want to beat Republicans? Fine, me too. They're an evil blight on this world. But I want to beat Republicans using strategies that have actually worked in the past, like appealing to progressivism. I don't want to beat Republicans trying the same completely and disastrously failed tactic again (Gore/Lieberman), and again (Kerry/Edwards), and again (Clinton/Kaine), and again (Biden/???). Championing progressivism motivates the independents (you know, the largest voting bloc in the country, who are coincidentally kept out of being able to vote in the primaries in many states) to come out and vote.
The problem in 2016 wasn't the candidates. The problem is how white people (in nearly all demographic permutations) vote for President.
See the maps at this link for a visual display of this.
https://brilliantmaps.com/if-only-x-voted/
cubist says
It's the Supreme Court, stupid.
Supposing Biden to be every bit the creepy sexual predator he's alleged to be, does anyone want to argue that Biden would nominate totally unqualified hacks like Kavanaugh?
In normal times, sure, protest vote or whatever. But we're not living in normal times, are we? As best I can tell, the US is well down the trail that the Weimar Republic blazed before us, and another four years of the Angry Cheeto's presidency might just finish that little job.
@28: Yes, progressives abstaining or voting third party are a completely sufficient cause of Democratic loss in 2000 AND 2016. Literally just those 3rd party voters added to the Democratic totals would have won both of those elections and saved lives. AND would have made future reforms much more likely. You guys need to own that, and you need to change that.
I don't make any excuses for racist Clinton-McCain voters in 2008. But Clinton didn't actively lead them on. She didn't insist on staying in the race after she lost. And 2008 had enough of a cushion (also, those weren't progressives, so they're not really relevant to your point anyway). And there's been a white cadre of Dems who like their racism trending Republican since Reagan.
You are NOT holding the DNC accountable by refusing to vote in the general election. The DNC will be FINE. Those are privileged people, insulated by their think tanks, donations, and consulting salaries. You're just killing a lot of vulnerable people. And it's not "the DNC" that is picking these candidates: it's Democratic voters. If you want to change that, get people registered to vote and enthusiastically participate in the primary. If you can't do that, why the fuck do you think the DNC keeps supporting bland centrists? They can at least get SOME people to vote for them (case in point: in 2018, Bernie-backed candidates did LESS well than generic Dems in swing districts! https://www.vox.com/2018/11/7/18071700/progressive-democrats-house-midterm-elections-2018).
Also, championing progressivism doesn't actually motivate independents—most "independents" are strictly partisan in their actual voting history but just like to imagine themselves "independent" because it sounds better. And just as many of them are reactionary conservatives as potential progressives. And again, in 2018, progressives running on that strategy did not do well. If an "independent" is actually a progressive, you should have no problem convincing them to register as a Dem and vote in the primary to give themselves a real option for a progressive candidate. But if you can't demonstrate your strength in the primary, why should we trust you in the general?!
And again, stop pretending "The DNC" is controlling everything. Voters are voting for the candidates they want in the primary. If you can't convince them over the extremely mild and ineffective resistance of the DNC, how are you going to fare against a massive Republican propaganda machine, Republican voter suppression AND a complicit mainstream media? Get your voters to vote, and if you win a primary then I'll support you.
Harm reduction matters. You are acting just like Mike Pence preferring a perfect world where no one did IV drugs rather than recognizing we need a needle exchange program. Harm reduction is central to all liberal/leftist public health, climate change, welfare, and education policy. Why don't you learn from it in your voting?
@30: there are no "normal times" when protest voting is acceptable. Remember how "normal" 2000 seemed? Remember how many people died in Iraq? Remember how many people died in drone strikes (yes, I know Obama continued them. But I also know that being a purist and letting Trump win has horrifically escalated them: https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2019/5/8/18619206/under-donald-trump-drone-strikes-far-exceed-obama-s-numbers)? Remember how SCOTUS decisions have made voting dramatically harder and more discriminatory? There is never a "normal time" for a protest vote. Democracies must always be actively maintained and we should work for voting reforms that make non-binary votes MATTER, not puffing up our egos when we wrongly thing protest voting is "safe" (like 2016!).
WMDKitty -- Survivor says
Here we go again. Bernie's fanbase behaving like toddlers and throwing a fit and not voting or voting for Trump out of spite.
Key issues:
Judges – do we want more unqualified right wing theocrats? Especially on the supreme court
National debt – 1T a year before the massive bailout
Loss of respect in the world
Our word means nothing
Taking away medical care for millions of people (and yes I know single payer is the ideal but we are stuck with what is possible which is V2 of Obamacare)
Feeding the poor
Competency in handling a national crisis
Preventative measures to stop the crisis in the 1st place
A president who does not tell major lies at the rate of one per hour – Biden has his moments trump is at least 2 orders of magnitude worse
Destruction of our institutions – government, press, etc.
In every one of these core issues to our community Biden is by far the best choice. We have seen 3+ years of a trump presidency. These are issues that will last for generations. To say "I will tepidly support Biden" or wish for a better system at this point is something I simply cannot understand. If the people who say they are on the right side of the above issues do not actively support the candidate who is we are doomed to a total disaster in the next 4 years.
Focus on what is important at this point – we need to do everything in our power to defeat trump and the republicans THIS election. That does NOT include bemoaning the candidate we have and doing everything you can do lessen his support and enthusiasm. Which is being done here and elsewhere.
Progressives now is the time to unite to get the best result possible which is very different from the best possible result.
Vote as though your planet, life and core values depend upon this election – it does.
leerudolph says
pick@23: "Whoa sorry, I didn't know I touched on anything! I thought I was making an absurd comparison for the sake of argument"
I assumed you had left out the word "if" before "Rebecca", and typed a "." where you should have typed "," before "I", thus:
blockquote>otherwise – Rebecca Watson claimed PZ groped her in an elevator. I wouldn't
blockquote>
I inserted them while reading, but obviously not every reader would.
Grrh. I'm obviously not one to (even implicitly) critique others' failures to proofread.
Re: The Vicar (#11):
Thanks for the neat summary, though I now regret not adding a "more than usual for a politician" as a qualifier to the lies. I guess now I have to ask myself where to draw that line. I didn't pay much attention to the candidates since I don't get to vote for any of them anyway, although even across oceans it's hard to avoid the recurring nuisance that is the US election cycle. It's especially annoying this time around since the DNC seems very keen to render the whole show utterly redundant.
Which brings me to my second reply:
Re: Pick (#9):
The republicans will love the choice of nominee. They may not care about sexual misconduct of any kind, but they realise that some voters do and will be put off by the democratic candidate. It's not a matter of degree either. Biden has earned himelf a reputation as a repat offender who does not respect boundaries or learn from his mistakes, which some people, who might vote democrats otherwise, will flat out reject. That's the voters' prerogative, just as it is the DNC's prerogative to put a candidate with (avoidable) red flags up front. I'll just refer you back to #15 for a reaction.
But absolutely, put up the guy who may average best in a split field while still alienating swathes of voters. Why, it's almost as if the way candidates are picked is deeply flawed and might have no relation to actual election turn-out at all. An odd oversight when there was so much concern about "electability" at the start.
Are you serious? Clinton didn't drop out of the 2008 primary until the convention. As was her prerogative, but she trailed Obama throughout the majority of the primary season and that still didn't cost Obama the election. What kind of historical revisionism DNC-apologetics is this? You're making claims that are easily checked and just as easily refuted. And stop pretending that registered Democrats represent all voters. Voters who are not affiliated with either party – i.e. independents – represent the largest voting bloc in the country by a wide margin, and many state primaries are closed. A minority of (mostly old and white) voters in the Democratic party gave us Biden. Most voters never got a chance.
If you can't be bothered to at least try to form a cogent argument to justify your out-group bias against progressives, you're not worth having a conversation with. So let me end this but thanking you for contributing to Trump's re-election by being such a short-sighted and selfish person; I sure hope my happy ass doesn't get deported or thrown into a concentration camp despite being a US citizen because I just happen to have ancestry in the country that Trump built his campaign around hating. Oh well, you've sure made it abundantly clear that even if I do, you won't lose sleep over it because you get to feel smugly superior about devoting more time and effort to fighting progressives than you ever have to fighting conservatives. I hope my safety is worth your limousine liberalism.
consciousness razor says
The whole party is a repeat offender which doesn't learn from its mistakes.
Here's a Biden quote from April 2019, when the other allegations were getting some attention and he was asked about it:
"I'm sorry I didn't understand more. I'm not sorry for any of my intentions. I'm not sorry for anything that I have ever done. I've never been disrespectful intentionally, to a man or a woman."
VIdeo and an accompanying article.
Brony, Social Justice Cenobite says
If Biden took the accusation seriously he could still win no matter what the outcome was. That's important for society. If you need self serving reasons other than avoiding Trump imagine Trump being made to look bad because Biden role-models apologizing for breaking boundaries and taking it seriously. Let the evidence determine from there and find ways of making each of the results useful.
nomdeplume says
And so it begins. Destroy Biden before November with a drip-feed of innuendo. But hey, it's not as if he was up against someone who was recorded about boasting about grabbing women on the pussy because he was a celebrity, right?
@38: um, no she fucking didn't? She was MUCH closer to him throughout the whole primary (and if you count Florida & Michigan she won the goddamned popular vote!), and she supported him TWO DAYS after she was mathematically eliminated (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries#April_and_beyond). She gave him all her delegates at the convention.
If those independents wanted a chance to pick a major party candidate, they are welcome to register with a major party (and those are NOT all progressives!). That's how this works. And how did your vaunted "independents" work out for you in 2018?!
May I also remind you that of the two of you, I am the only one who has given ANY citations?!
Many states primaries SHOULD be closed. Have you never heard of Republican ratfucking? With anything short of jungle ranked-choice primaries, an open primary is a recipe for disaster (and hurts progressives, too—that's how Dan Lipinski stayed on in 2018!). If someone cares who wins a Democratic nomination, they should admit they are functionally a Democrat. Stop telling us there are imaginary voters out there who support you. This is "the lurkers agree with me in email" on a national scale. IF they exist, get them to vote.
And fuck every Bernie supporter who whines about most Americans not getting a chance to vote when you guys were fighting tooth and nail to keep disenfranchising caucuses just because they helped your candidate last time around. Yes, we SHOULD have a national vote-by-mail primary, secondary, and tertiary with Ranked Choice Voting in all Democratic primaries, and stop this nonsense with some states going first. But—and this is crucial—SITTING OUT GENERAL ELECTIONS DOES FUCK-ALL TO ACCOMPLISH THAT GOAL. Why don't you actually advocate for election reform constructively rather than use it as an excuse to give up the power you do have?!
Also, I AM a progressive. I support free college, free daycare, universal health care (and I even think single-payer is the best way to accomplish that!), universal basic income, automatic voter registration with vote-by-mail, Warren's wealth tax, AOC's 70% top-marginal tax rate, and I could go on. I'm just not a fucking idiot. I don't support fascist collaborators who refuse to vote or vote third party. And, if you read more carefully, you'll notice Biden was my absolute LAST choice except for Bloomberg and Gabbard. I personally distrust Bernie's discomfort with race & gender issues, his class-first absolutism, and the fact that he put fucking Stein voters in his campaign management. I don't trust HIM, but I WANT to vote for progressive policies if they were championed by a competent person like Warren.
HOW am I supporting Trump's re-election? I didn't even have a chance to vote in the primaries, much less vote for Biden. I'm on record saying, before Bernie dropped out that if the race was still going when my state voted I would vote Bernie over Biden. I supported Warren. I tried to talk everyone I could out of Biden—but no one I know was supporting Biden anyway! YOU are the one welcoming those horrible outcomes you talk about. YOU are the one who is happy to throw away your vote for president and make it easier for Trump to win. YOU are the one who ignored every single time I mentioned in this thread that innocent people will die because of purists who won't vote rationally to stop Trump.
@39: no one here is disputing that. I must still ask you YET AGAIN how should we get that message out to rank-and-file primary voters?
"The whole party is a repeat offender"?! The DNC didn't choose Biden. They were REALLY quiet with endorsements this time around until he was winning WITH VOTERS pretty decisively. INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE voted for Biden. How should we reach them? How should we change their minds? Most of them, this time around, are really scared. They believe that Biden is most "electable," mostly because old white rich dudes on the teevee tell them so. I passionately disagree, and like I said above I'm fucking scared that we're going through this again with a milquetoast nominee and the whole thing is screaming Kerry rehash. But you're not punishing "the DNC" and the party power structure didn't select him (he didn't even raise that much money!), nor do they have mind-control powers over primary voters. But remember when you are too eager to "punish" democrats, you're "punishing" a lot of marginalized black voters in the South who are scared to death of further disenfranchisement and decisively chose "the devil they knew."
I seem to remember the statue of limitations has passed if Biden is not being falsely accused. In which case he can role-model doing the right thing and making Trump look like shit. This is if he wants to or not because if he's reasonable and wants to be president bad enough he'll do it. If he's honestly regretful he'll do it. If he id being falsely accused he and the Democrats look good for going through the process.
If Biden can't get with the times on personal boundary violations of any magnitude that doesn't bode well for his mental flexibility.
I quoted Biden and linked to the video of him saying it. It's really not like you must spew your irrelevant bullshit in response.
@41: NO ONE HERE DISPUTES THAT BIDEN IS A PRETTY SHITTY GUY. You are arguing with people who are not here. The question is not "Is Biden shitty?" because everyone here knows he is. The matter at hand is "is there any alternative to Biden RIGHT NOW that does not result in Trump winning in the real world?" and there isn't!
I have asked you SIX times how to reach out to Democratic primary voters to prevent this from continuing to happen. You have NEVER even ATTEMPTED an answer. Seriously—do you understand that Biden won the primary? I'm not asking if you like it. I fucking hate it. I'm asking, do you understand that the reason for his win was that 10 million individuals voted for him and only 7 million individuals voted for Bernie? The DNC does not control those 10 million people. WE KNOW that Biden is shit and at the very least is a handsy sexist. But how should we get the message to Democratic voters the next time there is a primary?
Saad says
oddie, #21
The only people to blame for the democratic lose to Trump is the Democratic Party.
The 60+ million people who voted/will vote for him might have a bit to do with it too.
azpaul3 says
Here we go again. The progressive left, of which I am one, go bitching and screaming like pissed-off cats.
He's not progressive enough. He's just another rich old white guy. He's a groper. He's not what I wanted.
I'll teach the DNC a lesson. It's my way or the highway.
If, as a fellow liberal progressive, you are so pissed at a Biden nomination that your view of the country and of this world can't see past the end of your liberal progressive nose then by all means punish all humanity and stay home. Split the left from the moderates and let that orange bastard waltz into the Oval Office … again.
If you haven't figured out what's at stake here then come November go ahead, flip the bird at the rest of this troubled world, put on your MAGA hat and your Stars-and-Bars shoulder patch and go sulk in your sham liberal progressive bedroom!
Here we go again. A lot in the progressive left, of which I am one, now go screaming and clawing like po'd cats.
If, as a fellow liberal progressive, you are so upset at a Biden nomination that your view of the country and of this world can't see past the end of your liberal progressive nose and you're going to teach the DNC and this society a lesson by not going to vote, then by all means punish all humanity and stay home. Split the left from the moderates and let that incompetent orange narcissist waltz into the Oval Office … again.
birgerjohansson says
Anyone who wants to stop the thugs from getting even more federal judges and from gerrymandering voting districts in 2021 must vote for the crap dung beetle candidate to stop the baby-eating serial killer candidate.
Ronald Couch says
Obama and the Clintons basically have enough pull in the Democratic party along with the other fosiles in power to distort the primary voting process in ways that almost assure the nomination of another conservative. If they stayed out and allowed things to develop naturally, this probably wouldn't happen (of course I suppose that would also require a relatively honest press). You can tell me that this is how the game is played and if I don't want to play hard ball I'd better be in another game and who knows you may be right. But these are the people who have (with the Republicans) cut our social safety net for the last 40 years. Hell, Biden is on record over and over wanting to cut Social Security.
So you have a party that is honest enough to say there really won't be any change if you elect us, and one that tells people we will fix your problems and by the way all your problems are caused by these foreigners, and poor people and people of color and sexual deviants. It works. Well they lie, but people believe the lie. Propaganda works.
Finally, in badgering people about not voting it might be good to look at this Greenwald article which says that it is really poor people and people of color and other minorities who don't vote and they do not vote mainly because they choose not to because they see neither party helping them in any real way. https://theintercept.com/2020/04/09/nonvoters-are-not-privileged-they-are-largely-lower-income-non-white-and-dissatisfied-with-the-two-parties/?fbclid=IwAR0ZJCNnobGlKpQBWLtnAtuOZu_UsKs_2CJp8bIujH3_t3ScIckW16eQniw
I see there are a lot of people in the US who are rightfully pissed off that Biden is perhaps the only viable alternative to the Angry Cheeto. Well, can't really blame you for that. The thing is, first-past-the-post voting systems kinda gravitate towards two-party politics. Since we have FPTP now, we're kinda stuck with two parties at the moment.
But we don't have to be stuck with two parties forever.
So I have a suggestion: Rather than allow your justifiable disapproval of Biden allow you to split the Angry Cheeto's opposition into however-many camps, none of which are individually large enough to FPTP the Cheeto's ass out of the Oval Office, may I suggest you save your outrage, and use it as fuel to work towards getting some other voting system implemented in the US? Ranked choice, approval voting, instant runoff, there's any number of alternatives to FPTP. And pretty much all these alternative systems don't end up shaping politics into the two-party form we've been stuck with.
jack16 says
@51 right on! Aproval voting is the way. Also election day should be a national holiday.
@50: HOW are Obama and Clinton "distorting the primary"? Are they forcing the votes of millions of people by mind control? They haven't even fucking endorsed anyone! EITHER of them! And even when prominent Democrats do endorse their colleagues—so what? Where exactly did you decide that political parties—which are by definition organized around particular ideological goals—should be neutral in the communication and achieving of these goals? Why is it odd to you that people want to communicate to each other what they think is best? Why are you unable to convince voters that your opinion is better than those of "establishment Democrats" that you're convinced the party is being "distorted" into believing?
Why are you conflating the Democratic party with a press that maniacally hates the Democratic party?
And no, don't be a liar—Obama secured one of the most massive gains in the social safety net through the ACA. Clinton was seriously considering campaigning on universal basic income except she couldn't get a pay-for structure that she thought would stand up to the scrutiny it would get (see how Elizabeth Warren got raked over the coals for her ideas being "unfeasible" even when they were very well-founded). I have nothing to say about Biden policy-wise, but the ugly, depressing fact of the matter is that a majority of primary voters chose him, even though he was SERIOUSLY out-fundraised by Bernie Sanders by almost DOUBLE ($181M vs $98M!). Even Elizabeth Warren beat him in fundraising at $136M.
Finally, fuck Glenn Greenwald. He's been pointlessly contrarian for years now. And that's a pretty major elision of voter suppression, felon disenfranchisement, a profound lack of civics education in public schools, and the utter degradation of the information ecosystem in this country. It would make MUCH more sense to try to reach out to those vulnerable people as community organizers and help them be a force to move the Democratic party to the left, rather than waiting for the Democratic party to do it for you. Moreover, that doesn't really change the fact that there is a subset of privileged leftists who choose not to vote (rather than having voting being unaccessible or not modeled in their community) or insist on voting stupidly, and those performative leftists are actually engaged and know the stakes, so their inaction is inexcusable.
@51: beautifully said, thank you.
Oh, for pete's sake. We know what sort of touching and kissing is being discussed because we've seen in on television. Biden is one of those people — like my aunts when I was a child — who considered hugging and kissing part of a normal greeting
Tara Reade's accusation is that Biden nonconsensually stuck his fingers in her vagina.
Did your aunts do that?
blockquote> Ms. Reade, 56, told The Times that the assault happened in the spring of 1993. She said she had tracked down Mr. Biden to deliver an athletic bag when he pushed her against a cold wall, started kissing her neck and hair and propositioned her. He slid his hand up her cream-colored blouse, she said, and used his knee to part her bare legs before reaching under her skirt.
"It happened at once. He's talking to me and his hands are everywhere and everything is happening very quickly," she recalled. "He was kissing me and he said, very low, 'Do you want to go somewhere else?'"
Ms. Reade said she pulled away and Mr. Biden stopped.
"He looked at me kind of almost puzzled or shocked," she said. "He said, 'Come on, man, I heard you liked me.'"
Biden says she's lying, so I guess it's OK.
I am disturbed that Biden is not even getting the same kind of whitewashy scrutiny that Bro Kavanaugh did. I guess Biden's just a product of his times.
vucodlak says
I'm trying to find a bright side in this shit show. If nothing else, I guess it's nice to have yet another list of people who will absolutely throw rape survivors under the bus if it's politically convenient.
How hard is it to admit that the accusation is credible, and should be investigated? To take it seriously? I mean, I'm pretty sure he did it, but I'm going to vote for him anyway. Why not? What's one more degradation on top of all the others?
Really, it's just fan-fucking-tastic to know that I not only have to vote for a rapist, but apparently I have to shit on survivors too. If I don't, I'm to blame for the godsdamned rapist losing to the other godsdamned rapist!
Go to hell. Or, to put it another way, "vote blue no matter who so we can all share the same handbasket!"
Personally, I recommend voting the straight AARON ticket: Absolutely All Republicans Out Now.
Status quo, in which the Cheeto is re-elected and the GOP controls everything it currently does (with a possible side order of re-acquiring control over some stuff it's temporarily lost), is the scenario which gives the GOP the biggest boost towards actually achieving its seeming goal of converting the US to a bizarre form of feudalism which doesn't include anything like the oaths that real feudal lords swore to their serfs. This plan is mostly implemented now, granted, but there are still some vestiges of progressive policies that haven't yet been stamped out of existence, and the GOP is clearly determined to finish that appalling job, you know?
Electing Not-The-Cheeto to the Presidency without also wresting Congress away from the GOP's grimy fingers… well, we've seen this movie already, and Obama II: What Did You Expect, Already? means the practical consequences of this option are pretty much the same as "Status quo" above. Maybe the GOP's plan is delayed a bit. Maybe.
So it seems to me that we damned well have to eliminate GOP control over any part of government.
Given a non-GOP Congress, which scenario offers the greatest likelihood of, not just undoing the Cheeto's myriad damages, but also getting real progressive goals implemented: The Cheeto as President, or Biden as president? Yes, Biden isn't going to meaningfully oppose the GOP. But in a scenario where Biden is accompanied by a Democrat-controlled Congress, would Biden do any more to oppose progressive policies than he would the GOP's regressive policies? Would Biden treat the office of the Presidency like a profit center in his org chart, as the Cheeto has been doing all along? Would Biden nominate flagrantly biased/partisan hacks to the judiciary who are essentially ignorant of the law, and whose only real qualification is that they're totes okay with the GOP?
Maybe you favor some other candidate than Biden. Cool. But given first-past-the-post, what's necessary is a candidate that can garner more votes than the 30%-or-so of the US who seem to have decided to latch onto the Cheeto as the Second Coming. So, it would be nice to implement some flavor of non-FPTP voting system, if at all possible. But there's no friggin' way we're gonna toss FPTP in the trash between now and November, is there? Which raised the question: Who do you think can actually bring out enough votes to FPTP the Cheeto out on his ass?
An alternative voting system is well worth working for, and I wish we would work for one, and I think one is pretty much a requirement if we want to have any hope of ever actually implementing a system where the ideals we've kidded ourselves about favoring are actually put into place. But that's for the longer-term future. For the immediate future—for the upcoming election of 2020—we're stuck with FPTP. Which means we're stuck with the damn two-party system.
We're stuck with one party in which actual, no-shit progressives actually can be elected, at all… and then there's the other party. Can anyone name me a GOP politician who's the equivalent of AOC? Anyone?
daemonios says
You need to demand true representative election for the highest office in your country, as well as Congress. As long as there is an electoral college, and as long as many states will designate their representatives for the electoral college following "winner takes all" rules, you'll be arguing the same issues over and over and over again. Al Gore won the popular vote. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Yet you got Bush The Second and Trump, perhaps the most harmful presidents you've had since Nixon. And that's without even going into the supposedly better Democrats. Obama was going to close Guantanamo. Obama was going to get your armed forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Where did those promises go?
In the mean time, you're allowing the Republicans to unashamedly destroy the democratic process through unlimited funding via shell companies, disenfranchisement laws for petty criminals, voter suppression actions, with the blessings of the same Supreme Court that refused to rule on explicitly politically-motivated gerrymandering "because it's not our business".
I know, I'm saying this from the comfort of an ocean's distance. But it truly boggles the mind that I keep reading the same criticisms since at least 2000. You can go to the streets for civil rights, school shooting victims, against police brutality… Why not take to the streets for the right to be represented outside a rotten two-party system?
Mike Smith says
Not that this should matter but I almost certainly will be drunk voting for Biden in Nov. I drunk voted for Clinton as well. I am being literal. I will be buzzed out of my mind to go vote for them. It is not a good act; it is at best only harm reduction
However, I think the line of thought that LeftSidePositive is following in this thread is fundamentally incoherent; the left cannot both be so powerful you need them in a FPTP system AND so weak as to not offer them anything for literally as long as I have been alive. (it should be noted that Biden's camp seems to realize this as he has drifted his policy leftward after Sander's dropped out which is why I am willing to drunk vote for him) If the left flank of the Democratic party is fundamentally needed to win a general election because true persuadable independents are too small to matter than the DNC/Democrats at large need to ensure that the base is happy and stop running moderates to drive turnout among the left. OR the moderate middle is persuadable and larger than the left flank and the DNC/Democrats at large would be better served focusing their effort at persuading them as allegedly Biden appeals to them. In short democrats at large selected a candidate because of his "electability" and his appealed to disaffected Republicans, independents and moderates. (There are problems with this short hand for accuracy) stop trying to persuaded the 1.4 million Stein voters to join the Democrats and try to get any portion of the 62 million trump voters to jumpship, or the 4.4 million libertarians to jumpship and leave us the fuck alone. And if you argue that those people cannot be reasoned with then you are admitting you can't appeal to them so why the hell did you select a candidate that is meant too?
Also, most people-as in 90% or so-do not have a coherent ideology and they are so ignorant of basic political and ethical philosophy that their ideological "opinions" are, frankly, nonsense. That most voters voted for Biden doesn't mean that they are thinking clearly. Most people voted for Biden based on electability and "the devil you know" both of which are highly malleable to media coverage which clearly was designed to kneecap Sanders. Moreover, we know for a fact that Obama on the eve of Super Tuesday and stepped in and convinced Mayor Pete, Klobacher, etc. to all drop out and endorse Biden expressly for the purpose of preventing Sanders. Pointedly Obama didn't try to convince Warren to drop out. I don't have a problem with this as matter of ethics-it's just basic tactics-but to act as if Biden won only because the rank-and-file selected him ignores the sequential nature of the process and the role media plays.
Also, also if you convince me to every vote solely on instrumental terms you are just going to convince me to not vote. you want to harp on math? single votes do not matter. You are more likely to be struck by lightening while winning the lottery than cast the pivotal vote in a FPTP system. It simply costs more to vote than any benefit I get.
lotharloo says
@Marcus Ranum:
I am disturbed that Biden is not even getting the same kind of whitewashy scrutiny that Bro Kavanaugh did. I guess Biden's just a product of his times
Biden has a "D" in his name. And as Obama's deportations and drone strikes show, if you have a "D" in your name, within the "leftist bubbles", if you have a "D", you can get away with crimes that would get people with an "R" in big trouble. Or as they say, yet another great argument for electing Biden! His crimes will go down with even less resistance, Yay!
Basically, it turns out the Ruben Bolling was premature, in that cartoon PZ blogged all those months ago. Biden is Ronald Hump, not just a stop along the way to him.
Oh, incidentally: for those who doubt my assertion that centrists in the party would rather lose with Biden than win with Sanders, take a look at the new revelations from the UK.
As most of us are at least dimly aware, the Labour party has much the same dynamic as the Democrats: the base polls to the left of the leadership, the leadership is split into leftists (until recently under Jeremy Corbyn) and right-of-center "centrists" (associated with former PM Tony Blair, the guy who knew for a fact that Bush was lying but went along with the Iraq war anyway, and who unlike in the US was shown the door for it). Corbyn was "rejected by the voters" in the recent election and is being removed, along with essentially all his supporters, from the Labour leadership.
The Corbyn faction has occasionally alleged the same thing about Blairite Labour that we are now alleging about the Clinton/Obama/Biden crowd — that they actively sabotage the party when it moves left. Well, a report has leaked that proved that they did exactly that, and it's worse than even the Corbyn faction alleged at the time. The "centrists" were deliberately destroying the party, because they viewed their job as making sure Labour would not actually undo the work of the Tories.
Sooner or later, we're going to get direct confirmation and proof of the same thing about the DNC. They know Biden will lose, and why, but they're okay with that. All the hand-wringing about Trump is, and always has been, theater for the rubes, and it's astonishing how many rubes believe it.
At 51. Oh come on. You know damn well what the DNC did to prevent Sanders from getting the nomination. Bringing out all the establishment "leaders" to oppose him. Just before super Tuesday having all the other candidates come out for Biden. The leaders of unions, black organizations, feminist organizations, LBGT organizations coming out for Biden people who consider themselves part of the leadership of the party. The fact that Biden has never been their friend doesn't matter. The MSM giving Biden almost 70 million dollars of good free publicity, turning on a dime to support him when it became clear that he was the only one who could stop Bernie just before Super Tuesday.
Three years ago when it appeared that Bernie's guy was about to become head of the DNC the Obama loyalist Perez rushed in to prevent that. Do you actually think that Obama had to come out publicly to oppose Sanders to oppose him? Clinton of course has been cruising around attacking Sanders for weeks publicly.
The Greenwald essay is based on objective data, polls mostly. It is not his beliefs. Did you read the article? If you have facts to show that he was wrong in his conclusions, please share them. People like you who are so deeply into the Democratic establishment remind me of the Cult followers of Trump. Nothing can shake your world view, facts really aren't all that important.
@Mike Smith: no, it's not incoherent at all that someone can be essential for victory IN A COALITION but not able to win victory themselves. Here, let's look at some math. Imagine an election where there are four main factions with the following popularity:
39%: shit sandwich
15%: vegan
36%: vegetarian
10%: carne asada
Now, the carne asada faction has basically no chance to win anything, but they are the margin of victory, and if they don't turn out, we get shit sandwich. See how a group can be essential to win but totally unable to win on its own? It's not that hard. And, more to the point, there are vegan voters who will be actively turned off by the vegetarian party incorporating some of carne asada's wish list (for instance, how Sanders-backed Dems did worse in the 2018 general compared to moderate dems).
Moreover, it is simply false that the Democrats have offered you nothing. Clinton had the most progressive platform of any Democratic candidate in history and actively included Sanders' team in drafting it (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/democrats-advance-most-progressive-platform-party-history-n606646). A significant chunk of the left showed they cared more about defining their identity as "more liberal than Democrats" and won't even reward outreach to them.
AGAIN, it's not the DNC that is "selecting" these candidates. Voters are voting for them. How do you suggest the DNC end up with your preferred candidate—by overturning voters' choices?
And BOO HOO if Dems who were clearly losing dropped out to consolidate their flank of the party. For one thing, they only did that once Biden started winning decisively, and if you think you were about to have a revolution but voters were swayed by Amy Klobuchar's endorsement, it really wasn't that much of a revolution!
And if most people's political philosophy is so squishy—why do you assume that they will be swayed by your candidate when you have no concrete evidence of that, apart from your own wishful thinking? Should you just get to decide who gets the nomination without a primary process, if the voters don't do what you want? How is that different from the machinations you're all convinced the DNC is doing? (Case in point, Bernie in 2016 railing against superdelegates as being un-democratic and then rallying his supporters with hopes that those superdelegates would overturn the popular vote!) Why are you conflating the mainstream press, which notably hates ALL Democrats, with the DNC?! Yeah, I'm really annoyed that most primary voters chose Biden—but you guys had a chance to convince people to show up for Bernie and you failed. If you haven't convinced people strongly enough that your guy is worth supporting over the extraordinary political force of… Amy Klobuchar… I don't know what to say to you.
And maybe your individual vote is unlikely to be THE one that changes it—but these things happen IN AGGREGATE. In both 2000 and 2016 the number of protest voters far exceeded the GOP margin of victory in the relevant states. Would you tolerate that logic for not getting your kids vaccinated? "Well, the likelihood that my kid will get measles is so low, it simply costs more to drive to the pediatrician's office than any benefit I would get…"
@64:
1) The MSM is not the DNC.
2) If "leaders of unions, black organizations, feminist organizations, LBGT organizations" are more convincing to voters than your candidate, that's a you problem.
Abe Drayton says
I posted this elsewhere, but I want to add it to what Ronald Couch said about a recent intercept article, because it keeps getting ignored:
As Consciousnessrazor pointed out back on comment 32 of Vote for the lesser of two dotards:
An article about non-voters, based on this Pew Research survey on the 2016 election.
Those who didn't vote, compared to those who did:
— Lower age (66% under 49 vs. 43% under 40 among voters)
— Fewer whites, more racial minorities (52% white vs. 74% among voters)
— Lower education (51% "HS or less" vs. 30% among voters)
— Lower income (56% less than $30k income vs. 28% among voters)
More detail in this chart, which can also be found via the other links above.
I see a lot of comments here completely ignoring this as being even a possibility, and characterizing any and all people choosing not to vote as childish, privileged, etc.
I'm sure there are elements of that, but as usual, the reality seems to be a bit more complex. One of the key elements of critical thinking is noting when evidence contradicts what seems like it ought to be true, and working to take that into account. If, as a non-trivial amount of data suggest, a sizable portion of non-voters are NOT over-privileged, immature, etc., then maybe there are other factors at work.
I think some folks on the Sanders end of things tried to sound the alarm on at least some of what that is, and were largely ignored. Some of them are STILL trying to point out that simply yelling at people to vote for the lesser of two evils isn't going to solve the problem.
And the response is still a fairly uniform, "if you're saying that you must be privileged and selfish", which still ignores at least part of the problem, and doesn't actually address the concern.
Personally, I believe that voting for the lesser evil in this case is the right call, provided it comes with real effort to build a working-class/socialist movement to provide an infrastructure of support for left politicians outside of the two-party system. I think that work will be easier to do without the constant shitstorm of the Trump administration sapping everyone's energy.
But there's a difference between making that case, and just insulting everyone who isn't willing to vote for Biden. If the numbers cited above are correct, when you accuse non-voters of being selfish and privileged, some of the people getting that message are going to know that it's incorrect, and that you're making an argument that doesn't even acknowledge their existence, let alone their reasons for what they do.
It's a nice bit of rhetoric, but as with many, it's too simplistic, and if your messaging doesn't account for reality, it's likely to be counter-productive. I don't want Trump to win, so I hope some folks here take that on board, and reconsider how they go about this.
@Abe Drayton:
You are giving people like LeftSidePositive too much credit. They have no argument, they do not engage with the substance. I stopped reading his drivel when he couldn't give a simple yes/no answer to a simple question and instead wrote pages and pages of text.
@#65, LeftSidePositive:
Go read the link I posted at #63 about the Labour Party. The DNC is pretty certainly doing all the same stuff, it just hasn't been made public yet. But there's already some stuff which is public that's pretty terrible.
For example, by March 17, the day of the primaries in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, and Ohio, the Democratic narrative was already very definitely that Trump's response to the coronavirus was insufficient, that we needed better containment, and that people should practice social distancing. The Sanders campaign suggested that the primaries should be postponed on those grounds. Nevertheless, the DNC sided with the Biden campaign to say that there was no way that voting — even if you had to stand in line — could possibly be dangerous. (Since then, at least 3 poll workers who were on duty have been confirmed to have had coronavirus on the day of the election, which means that some unknown number of voters were definitely exposed to coronavirus specifically because they voted.) I recall seeing reports from multiple sources at that time that the motivation for the rush was that the DNC's internal polling data suggested that Biden's position was weakening in the face of the epidemic because of his position on single-payer, and they wanted to firm up his lead. The DNC continued to stand with the Biden campaign for about another 4 days, at which time they finally admitted that voting was a danger to the public. The Biden campaign, however, was still pushing for continuing with in-person voting at primaries at least as late as March 31. (But… but… Biden will listen to scientists! He won't risk American lives for his own personal gain like Trump!)
@lotharloo:
It wasn't directed at any one person, and while there are certainly people who will never take new information on board, others will.
I read this blog, and its comments, for a long time before I ever bothered to make a comment myself. Hopefully someone will take something useful away, even if they never comment themselves.
@67: No one is disputing that there are disengaged non-voters. But those aren't the people who make big sweeping comments on blogs about how they're refusing to vote out of spite which they pretend is principle. There is a major subset of people who are involved enough to know that the Democratic party is inadequately liberal, who have enough time to rant about it on social media, who take the time to vote 3rd party, and these people are a major problem. They're also HERE. People who lack the educational access, spare time, community support, etc., to vote are not the people we're complaining about, and stop pretending it is. Also, how are you so sure that these people will have access to your message, and have the necessary political background to find it compelling? If you could do that, you could get them to vote in the primary.
LeftSidePositive. Can't argue with a fanatic.
@69: yes, I will agree that I was seriously disappointed by Biden's approach to in-person voting. But let's not pretend it changed the outcome from how polls were going beforehand. He was still strongly favored to win going in. More to the point—what should we do about it? Will sitting out the election in November make Democrats more likely to listen to you? Absolutely not. It's failed for 50+ years. If you want to insist that Democrats redo the primary nationwide and by mail because an unknown number of voters were afraid to cast ballots, I'd actually thoroughly support that (like I said, I don't fucking like Biden at all!), but I can't imagine party leaders would overturn rules like that on the fly or even how they would obtain the authority to do so, or how candidates would un-suspend campaigns to participate. But I don't believe we should preemptively give up on reforms because they are hard, so if there is any activism around retroactively expanding the franchise in the primary, I'll be happy to participate.
@72: is it seriously "fanatic" to recognize that splitter effects exist, that our voting rules are First Past The Post, that elections have consequences for real people, and that parties endorsing people isn't actually unusual or nefarious in any way?
Captain Jeep-Eep says
I'll say it before, I'll say it again: Biden is the ultimate victory of Trumpism – it being that both parties vote for monsters in the hope of Making America Great Again., never mind what it means for the lower classes or minorities.
And before anyone says supreme court – Biden helped fuck it up, and he won't put anything good in. Only thing that would fix it is packing at this point. A victory for Biden would probably be pyhrric in the extreme – bad policy, solidifying that both don't give real shits about minorities, and probably means that it's another 8 years before we get anything done on climate.
@74 Nope it is a fanatic who denies that the entrenched party leadership has no influence on the primary election process. It is a fanatic who denies that there is in fact an entrenched party and organizational leadership. It is a fanatic who attacks an article because of who it is written by rather than what is in the article.
@76: I never said that entrenched party leadership has no influence on the primary election process. I said that they were SUCCESSFUL IN CONVINCING VOTERS and if you can't do that, that's your problem. Political parties band together for policy goals. They are by nature not neutral entities, nor should they be. It is utterly ridiculous that you think you should be entitled to take over a party without anyone who disagrees with you even speaking up or engaging in basic politics themselves. If your ideas were as strong with voters as you think they are, you should have no problem overcoming the very mild resistance borne of their different political preferences.
And no, I am absolutely categorically never going to drive traffic to the fucking Intercept. They are not a credible news source. Moreover, I already explained to you that if you think disengaged voters are clamoring for what you're offering—WHY CAN'T YOU GET THEM TO VOTE IN A PRIMARY? And if they won't vote for your ideas in a primary, why should we believe that they are waiting to vote for you in the general?
@75: You're lying about SCOTUS and you should fucking be ashamed of yourself. You know perfectly well it was standard practice in the 80s for justices to be confirmed unanimously. You know perfectly well he voted AGAINST Clarence Thomas (and yes, his behavior to Anita Hill was a major reason why I would never vote for him in a primary). You know perfectly well he led the fight agains Bork. You know he has a major incentive to protect voting rights, as does the rest of the Democratic party. Think of all the people you are condemning to a preventable death because you are persuading comfortable, willfully denialist purity-fetishists that a week-old baloney sandwich is the same as a shit sandwich. It isn't. Biden sucks. No one argues with that. But he WON THE PRIMARY. American voters voted for him—some because they were scared, some because they believed MSM crap about "electability," some because they are superficial and only want the nice times from Obama back. But the fact remains the problem is with American voters, and refusing to engage in basic harm reduction while we do the hard work of convincing those voters to be better is just plain fucking stupid.
And another thing—by FAR Biden's primary blowouts were driven by the choices of Black voters. Are you really going to discount the choices of minority voters and then insist the party doesn't care about minority voters?!
After reading the Times article, it is very difficult for me to think that Tara Reade is telling the truth. The only way that story makes sense is if she were telling it about someone with a background like Trump himself. I think that Putin/Trump et. al. are trying to con the Bernie supporters or anyone ready to put correctness above truth. It will not be the last smear of Biden. If you turn on right wing radio, you'll find them pushing this and other Biden nonsense, 24/7
Don't talk bawls, it was old black folks and the suburbs.
The Times article is garbage, and fails to point out things like how Biden sexually harassed secret service agents by pointedly making female ones watch him swim naked, last I checked.
Moreover, I already explained to you that if you think disengaged voters are clamoring for what you're offering—WHY CAN'T YOU GET THEM TO VOTE IN A PRIMARY?
Insufferable asshats like you. That's part of the reason.
Notice how you're putting it on Ronald Couch's lap. Why can't Ronald Couch get them to vote? What a dumb fucking question.
It's only slightly less dumb if "you" is supposed to mean progressives or leftists. The data pertained to Hillary Clinton (a centrist/conservative Dem) not getting support from a certain collection of people in the general election. It was not about progressives/leftist Dems, because there were none on the ballot.
Even if you had a good reason to dispute the source, the information actually came from Pew Research, not from The Intercept which only wrote the article recently. It was specifically and precisely about the 2016 general election, in which Clinton & Trump were the nominees.
Your vague bullshit about "a major subset" is just hiding the fact that you've been disingenuously focusing on what is actually a small fraction of non-voters. It's also really not just the ideological "left" that is being sidelined by the Dems. Those who didn't vote, in 2016 when faced with Clinton vs. Trump, were disproportionately (1) younger, (2) not white, (3) less educated, and (4) poorer.
Even if we only looked at that last trait by itself, that represent most people in the country. If we only looked at the first, that certainly represents the future of it. (And guess what? 2020 is in fact the future, from the perspective of 2016.) If you don't like the evidence, it's not going anywhere. You just have to learn from it and learn how to change.
I'm sorry, what? Me stressing the importance of harm reduction in voting is somehow preventing you from reaching out to marginalized minority voters? HOW?
Ronald Couch's essential argument is these non-voters who do not see either party as useful would be won over by Bernie Sanders. I am asking why, IF HIS ARGUMENT IS TRUE, Bernie Sanders and supporters can't get them to vote for him? That is an essential question.
AGAIN. I do not and have not disputed the existence of disengaged voters. You would be a lot more worthwhile if you actually engaged with arguments I have actually made. You will notice that I discussed major systemic barriers to participation (and political awareness) of those disengaged voters, and I discussed how that makes me skeptical that they will rally around Sanders. That is—and I cannot stress this enough—the exact opposite of denying they exist. Moreover, the fact that they exist, and the fact that they are the majority of non-voters DOES NOT EXCUSE performative privileged leftist, who demonstrably exist and demonstrably throw elections to Republicans rather than by engaging in harm reduction.
As I have told you MULTIPLE TIMES, I am focusing on this subset BECAUSE THEY ARE THE ONES HERE. There are people here, on these threads, openly saying they refuse to vote for the Democratic nominee because they value their purity or they idiotically think that "teaches the Democrats a lesson." It is an indisputable fact that there are enough of these people to swing elections—they had higher vote totals in 2000 and 2016 than the Republican margin of victory in decisive states. Defeating the utterly stupid mentality of purity voting would IN ITSELF be enough to win elections. And, while less numerous than marginalized disengaged voters, they are engaged enough to claim to know what's going on, and they are actively choosing to fuck over their fellow Americans. What I'm seeing here is people who actively refuse to vote using poorer voters as a shield from their own selfishness and privilege.
There is nothing contradictory about confronting the GOP- and Russia-supported ratfucking of privileged pseudolefty purity idiots who parade their intentional refusal to vote, AND engaging with low-information, low-access voters who have been systematically denied the tools to understand our political structure. But the latter group isn't reading Pharyngula. The former group is. And the former group is enough to ruin elections, so even if they can't be convinced, they need to be fucking shamed into silence before they perpetrate their self-defeating idiocy onto another generation of idealists duped into giving up their power.
AND AGAIN, there is a perfectly good opportunity to show that you have engaged non-voters: IN THE PRIMARY. Why can't the Sanders team do that? You guys are convinced that America is clamoring for you, but you can't produce the voters. In 2018, you guys did WORSE in general elections than generic Dems! I'm not the one who is ignoring evidence and refusing to change.
@pick 79
So the Ds should ignore an accusation, not because you see a lie, but because you're motivated not to believe things. Things you can't articulate.
This society is broken.
@pick
Oh and going from "difficult to believe" to smear. You definitely think she's lying and don't have the guts to point to a lie.
I'm going to keep grilling Ds here. You need to be better.
No one argues with that. But he WON THE PRIMARY.
Past tense.
Biden has almost 1230 pledged delegates, but over 1990 are needed at the convention to have a majority in the first round. That is only 61% of the way toward the finish line, yet you act like it has already been passed and we already have those results. By my count, there are still 21 out of 50 states left, plus DC, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam.
Biden has gotten about 10.1 million votes. The projected number of eligible voters in 2020 is about 235 million. If all of those who voted for Biden in the primary also vote for him the general election, that represents only 4.3% of the total. (Of course, many of those Democratic primary voters are also in Republican-dominated "red" states, where Biden will certainly not win, which matters because we use the electoral college.)
Me stressing the importance of harm reduction in voting is somehow preventing you from reaching out to marginalized minority voters? HOW?
Such a persistent bullshitter. Insufferable asshats like you, always pushing the centrist party line no matter what may come, are part of the reason some people are too thoroughly disgusted by both parties (or our entire political system) and don't believe the outcome of the election will make a real difference.
For some reason, it's never about "how I can reach out." It's something you always just expect from others.
@86: I have literally asked you how I should reach out EIGHT FUCKING TIMES over three threads, you worthless fucking liar. You have persistently refused to answer. So, FOR THE NINTH TIME:
HOW SHOULD WE ENGAGE AND COMMUNICATE WITH BARELY-ENGAGED AND/OR PATHOLOGICALLY CAUTIOUS PRIMARY VOTERS THAT BIDEN AND THOSE LIKE HIM ARE A BAD IDEA?
I have asked you this multiple times. You keep repeating how bad Biden is. WE ALL KNOW. No one disputes that. I have not seen a SINGLE poster on any of these threads say centrist Dems are good, especially not Biden. But the fact is they win primaries because people I don't know and have no access to keep voting for them. If I knew how to get hold of people who barely pay attention and when they do, listen to what Chris Matthews tell them, I would do that. Those voters are the problem, not super-politically engaged people on Pharyngula who stress the importance of voting in the general election and pushing back on people who declare they will sit the election out.
Bernie Sanders has suspended his campaign. I'm not sure where you are getting your fantasy that he will somehow get a colossal share of votes left to happen when he has thus far gotten only 75% of Biden's share, but fine. It is completely irrelevant to people declaring their intention not to vote in the general, and that's what we're talking about here. If it makes you feel any better, if Bernie Sanders is on my ballot when I finally vote in the primary, I will vote for him over Biden. But I again ask you how are you going to convince enough people to do that to make that reach a majority? I again ask you why we should believe there are millions of people dying to vote for your choice in the general when they're not engaged in the primary, AND Dem Socialist candidates in 2018 underperformed generic democrats?
Moreover, I have NEVER pushed the "centrist party line" unless you consider the fact that "elections have serious consequences and people will die if lefties insist on sitting out or voting third party" is a "centrist party line" instead of, like, reality. I have said and continued to say that Biden sucks. I like Bernie's policies on paper but deeply distrust him as a candidate and as a human being, especially because of the toxic people he associates with, including David Sirota, Jeff Weaver, Nina Turner, and Briahna Joy Grey. But why is this Warren supporter responsible for generations of structural barriers to the participation of fast food, transit, & service industry workers who don't have the educational background or time to engage in politics to notice that Democrats are doing more for wage protection, unionization, health care access, food assistance, public health, transit, etc. than Republicans EVER will (even if the Democrats' efforts are not enough), but apparently are so engaged that they're reading the Pharyngula comment section and have decided to abstain from politics because I've pointed out that more vulnerable people will die under Trump's policies than Biden's?!
Moreover, there is a HUGE fucking difference between people who are uninformed about politics in toto—the young, minority, low-income non-voters—versus people who are actively disgusted by "both parties" but persistently refuse to notice every single time that the election of Republicans really does make a real and horrific difference.
@LeftSidePositive
I am not interested in engaging in this argument once again with a person who insists on straw manning what I said on the first pass. I am only going to talk about three things. I will not reply again.
First the strawmanning:
"I don't have a problem with this [moderates dropping out on the eve of super Tuesday] as matter of ethics-it's just basic tactics-but to act as if Biden won only because…"
You can take your BOO HOO and fucking shove it. I didn't-remotely-say what happen was unfair or uncouth. I was pointing out-correctly-that voter's preferences are highly malleable in large part because they don't have an ideology and the moves on even of super Tuesday are a big reason why Biden won the primary. I DO NOT HAVE A PROBLEM WITH WHAT HAPPENED AS A PROCESS. It is just that process didn't necessarily reflect people's actual preferences in isolation because of sequential nature. Biden BTW unexpectedly won Minnesota and an endorsement of Klobuchar certainly played a role in that.
Second, you can not believe that the GOP is actually a monolith and pursue candidates like Biden as electable; he expressly is meant to build a coalition from center. If you numbers are right that coalition is inherently unstable and will fly apart. Again if you think people are easily swayed-which by everything you have asked in this thread seems to indicate-for the love of god go persuade GOP voters to flip. Gore would have won if you manage to pick off just 600 of the 2.9 million Bush voters. And no Clinton didn't offer me anything because she lied about adopting parts of Sanders platform-I lived through the Obama and know exact what promises are worth. More generally I don't want to see reform to the system at this point. I want the system gone.
Third, if my kid had a better chance of getting struck by lightening while winning the lottery yup I wouldn't vaccinate them unless it was completely free and someone else drove them to the doctor. single. votes. do. not. matter. in terms of the outcome. I routinely vote my aspirations. Pointedly if I wasn't in a swing state-I am in WI-there would zero chance of me voting for Biden.
Oh for the record: I am dirt poor, queer, disabled. and youngish. The voters you think are not here are in fact here.
I guess 4 things: what MSM have you been watching? Democrats are generally supported by several factions of the media abet with qualification. MSNBC continues to exist.
abbeycadabra says
I'm really glad flecks of foaming spittle can't travel over the internet.
Lots of unhinged all-caps. Labeling Sirota, Weaver, Turner and Gray as "toxic," while also denying that you're making a bunch of centrist/conservative noise. Nothing new.
How about you come up with your own fucking answers to your loaded question? Ever think of that?
I've been wondering about applying social pressure to electors. I'm not an R or D and neither of those parties are in the constitution. Why should I have to deal with party bullshit when it comes to the people whose vote is technically supposed to matter?
I'm not saying I won't or shouldn't deal with the Democratic party as an entity, but I shouldn't have to only do that.
@88—so if you don't have a problem with the process, what is your point? If the average voter doesn't have a coherent ideology, how does that excuse leftists who DO from refusing to vote for harm reduction? If you don't have a problem with moderate Dems dropping out to favor consolidation, you must also admit that those voters with their malleable ideologies were not prevented from voting for Bernie after that, and if Bernie had any kind of mandate that should not be any real resistance at all. If Bernie doesn't have any type of mandate, why does a major faction of his base insist that he is The Chosen One who would win general elections if only the DNC would clear the way for him? Why should we indulge this fantasy and trust that voters' incoherent decision-making process would naturally land on Bernie? And especially not when his candidates didn't do well in 2018? I agree voters' ideologies are hugely incoherent, and I'm super frustrated that we ended up with Biden, and as I've said we need ranked choice voting and other reforms and we have to figure out how to change hearts & minds rather than blaming the alleged machinations of the DNC, which, for all their flaws, are going for people who ACTUALLY VOTE.
And I actually DO believe that GOP voters are as close to a monolith as it is possible to be. They are hateful, racist fascists hell-bent on destroying democracy, subjugating women, and exploiting and disenfranchising people of color. Where the fuck have you been? There are MILLIONS of Americans who are explicitly for those kind of horrors. I can't imagine how to change their minds, but it never ceases to infuriate me that people who claim to be against those things don't care whether their actions/inactions make those things more or less likely to happen. And, for the record, I have never said Biden was "electable"—in fact I specifically disagreed with that. But the fact is we have a process for choosing who will be our standard-bearer against the GOP, and Biden won it. I don't like that, but making excuses for people sitting out or trying to lay this at the feet of "the DNC" is asinine.
WHEN did I say voters are easily swayed? Please quote it back to me. I have said repeatedly that I am profoundly frustrated by Biden's win and I don't know how to reach people who thought he was a good choice. I have said I am heartbroken that Warren didn't win. I don't even think the purity idiots are swayable, but at least they should be confronted for the harm they perpetrate.
You seriously wouldn't do your part for herd immunity and protecting the immunocompromised with vaccination? Wow, you're a fucking asshole. And yes, single votes matter. Every bloc of voters are a bunch of individual voters. You are giving excuse to inaction and self-defeatism.
@89: MSNBC that hires Joe Fucking Scarborough and Megyn Kelly?! They have a FEW liberal personalities but are way too friendly with some really awful rightwing people, and they are so far left of the rest of the media, which are PROFOUNDLY conservative.
@91: because I told you I don't know how. I'm openly admitting that. I am frustrated & horrified that Biden is the nominee, and I DO NOT KNOW HOW to reach the people who picked him. I have told you so many, many times. You are (rightly) outraged that Biden is the nominee, but you have ONLY stood up for people who defend non-voting on this thread, and others. YOU asked me why I am addressing purity vote-abstainers instead of people who voted for Biden, and I told you: they former are the ones here, they are a large enough bloc to throw elections, AND I don't know how to reach the average barely-engaged Dem primary voter. I don't think you do either, which is why you refuse to answer my question—but why put on a great big performative show about how awful Biden is when what we're talking about is the people who are wiling to let Trump win?
What conservative noise am I making? Please quote it.
@92, Brony: we tried that in 2016. They just voted for Colin Powell instead of actually effecting the outcome of the election. And if you care who is the candidate to oppose fascism, then you have to care about what goes on in the Democratic party, because that's how our fucked-up elections work. It shouldn't have to be like that, but it is right now, and you can get involved with organizations like FairVote and call your state & local reps to favor ranked-choice voting.
if 62 million Americans are unreachable and fundamentally unreasonable than the American society isn't one. If you believe that 62 million Americans are inevitably on the road to fascism and won't get off said road or are fascists than you are conceding that electoral politics are pointless. This makes the conversation moot. Pick. Go buy a gun. the 62 million people if they are fascists will not accept a Biden win and thus even if he does we are in for society imploding and political revolt. So again go buy a gun. If you truly believes this you would not be advocating voting for Biden you would be advocating preparing for armed struggle and self defense. Your views are either incoherent or you are not serious. if 62 million Americans are fascists than violent armed resistance is the only way forward. Fascists do not respect democratic outcomes and will do anything to maintain power. If Trump is actually a fascist than only armed resistance matters. You cannot both believe that the GOP are actually fascists and also believe it is worthwhile voting. It's idiotic and utterly divorced from history. Note: unlike most here I am utterly opposed to any gun control measure precisely on these grounds.
you have propositioned that voters are easily swayed or are generally swayable when you have repeatedly told me to go sway them. All I am doing is returning the favor. Biden was selected to appeal to the moderates. Go bother them and leave me the fuck alone. Allegedly there are more of them.
if the chance of getting measles was identical to casting the pivotal vote herd immunity would not be a thing that would require any worry or consideration. You are vastly overestimating the chance of casting the pivotal vote. This is not a matter of opinion. single votes are functionally worthless…there is a whole field of study working on this problem here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_voting. ..the odds of casting the pivotal vote are literally on the order of being struck by lightening while winning the lottery for any state onto itself. The electoral college functionally means most Americans cannot be the pivotal vote. You harm reduction argument, such as it is, only applies to people in the swing states and most strongly applies in the rust belt. You cannot reduce harm by voting for Biden if you live in Wyoming, or Kentucky. There is zero reason instrumentally to bother voting for president in those states if you are a leftist.
The actual probability of getting the measles is much higher than that and thus herd immunity should be worried about.
MSNBC or the media being conservative does not mean they are anti-democrat party. you are equivocating. The democrats moderates are conservatives.
I DO NOT KNOW HOW to reach the people who picked him.
Those who "picked him" (past tense) are in the past.
Your actions don't affect the past. Your actions can affect the future (in for example the 21 states that remain, plus several territories).
That should not have be said even once, but I've had to reiterate the point several times. I don't know what else to tell you, if you just don't grok how to think about now or about any part of the near future which isn't the general election in November.
You are (rightly) outraged that Biden is the nominee,
He's not the nominee. That could happen at the convention, which is not in the past.
I don't want you to just say it's right, parenthetically. You should start acting like it's right to be outraged by Biden (and the party and the media's role in all this), instead of acting like it's wrong to be outraged.
but you have ONLY stood up for people who defend non-voting on this thread, and others.
Simply false. Fabricated out of whole cloth.
— In #39, I quoted Biden. That also linked to a video, in case any masochists out there needed to literally hear the asshole saying he's not sorry for anything he's ever done.
— In #81, I discussed the results of a political survey about non-voters.
— In #85, I discussed the fact that Biden hasn't "won the primary," and I discussed what the results which we do have may entail about the general election: little or nothing.
— In #86, I made a claim about what causes some people to be non-voters and/or think the outcome of the election won't matter.
— In #91, I criticized your comment and asked why you haven't even attempted to give an answer the one basic question which (so you claim) has been bothering you so much. Your answer: you just don't know. But that presumably doesn't suffice for anyone who isn't you, especially not for anyone who criticizes you.
I don't know which comment number this will be, but it's also not standing up for people who defend non-voting in this thread, much less "ONLY" doing that. I have no clue what "and others" is doing in that sentence, so I can't even remark on it.
it is an utterly perverse fetish of American politics that voting is the be all end all of civic engagement. Most people should be discouraged from voting as they are frankly too god damn stupid and ignorant too know what they are doing. Voting for Biden will not reduce harm in the end. Obama directly led to Trump. You're delaying harm not reducing it because all you are doing is being triangulated out of power.
Why do you think the GOP has gotten so bad? I think they have gotten so bad because their base gets what they want or stays home and they are willing to lose battles to win wars.
logicalcat says
Several things. Most of I already covered.
1) Reade has way too many red flags thats not common to what Ive seen with rape survivors. First is the fact that before 2016 and the rise of Bernie she praised her former boss as a champion of women and this was years after she stopped working for him or politics in general where you can say she said this to save her career. Ive never seen victims of rape talk praise and promote the work of their rapist after they stopped working for them. Years after even.
2) She changed her tune after 2016 and anti establishment sentiments sweeped the country. She went from "champion of women" to "hes a creep who caressed my neck". Its believable given Bidens inapropriateness, but now deep into the primary when every antiestablishmentarian leftist are struggling with the realization that Bernie will not win, she decides to change the story again to "actually he didnt just caress my neck, he raped me". If its true she did not help herself here. Im tired of comparisons to the Kavanaugh case. Blaise Ford was way more credible than this. These are red flags. Its true that rape victims get harrassed online, but they get harrassed now more so that MeToo has died down. She would have gotten less uf she did this earlier instead of the amazingly coincidental primary.
3) its consistent with how the purity politics left operates. They've accused democrats of rigging the primary, Hillary committing war crimes somehow, accused Hillary and Bill of being pedophiles because they knew Epstein (everyone knew Epstein, and planes dont run on rails, you need more evidence other tham your disgust of the establishment), they've accused Hillary of orchestrating the Seth Rich assassination n thats just how they operate and we have all turned a blind eye on this. Rape accussation would be the next logical step. Being on the left they know about #believeallwomen, they know the arguments and are primed to use them against the establishment. Its what i would have done if i was demented enough. Accuse Biden of rape, then when skeptics poke holes in her story I know just what to say to them, because we've seen rape denialism often enough. When poking holes in her story I know to say things like "nobody believes rape victims". I know how to use the words "credible" in such a way as to lend false credibility. Basicaly using our feminism against us, exploiting the emotions of rape victims while Im at it. Its pretty sickening.
4) lets say it is true, rape victims have a hard enough time being believed, but coupled that with how antiestablishmentarian berniebros have been behaving like I mentioned in number 3, would make it even harder. Its the boy who cried wolf. You've pegged the democrats as murderers and fascists, poisoning the well and making it even harder for her to be believed. I expect this board to ignore the red flags in her story, but at least acknowlege that the purity politics of BernieBros is a real thing and does real harm. Their actions and rhetoric, often false and dishonest fucked it all up and set back leftism decades. Because now why would anyone back up a leftist movement when their penchant for false conspiracies mirror the alt right? It makes us look like an alt left, which shouldnt be a real thing but thats what it is. You ensure that candidates like Biden are all the candidates we are going to get, because no one wants to join a revolution when the revolutionists act like dishonest idiots.
Writing this on my phone so sorry for typos and bad grammar (more than usual i mean).
Oh and while Im here. Cant stand the "have democrats learned nothing from 2016" line. I mean; have any of you learned either? Because leftists are doing the same errors. They choose to act as a propaganda wing for the Right, instead of voting fo their guy (Sanders) mad at democrats who failed to vote for the candidate you want, instead of thinking for themselves and choosing the one they liked. Sanders camp could have turned many democrats, instead he and his fanboys choose to alienate them.
There's no evidence that Sanders could win against Trump anymore than Biden. There is evidence that Sanders fails to inspire voters to actually vote tho, even among his own base. All you have are polls and surveys from people who've never seen Sanders run a heated campaign against a Republican.
Also all this talk about "but the MSM!" Again yall sound like republicans. Is this the same meanstream media who wouldnt shut the fuck up about the many go know where scandals of Hillaries campaign? The MSM can fuck over democrats as much as leftists as much as republicans. Their only loyalty is to their ratings.
sorry i forgot to add. That its a self fullfilling prophecy. You say people are not enthusiasm for voting Biden and you make it happen, by again acting as a propaganda wing for the Right and using lesser evils and other narratives which brings peoples enthusiasm down.
Some of you are doing it on purpose because your irrational antiestablishmentarian means youd rather Trump wins if it means Biden loses, some are doing it inadvertently. Either way the worst among us wins. The Right will win next election, and the irrational leftists who form and disseminated this rhetoric will gloat "i told you so" even tho they had a hand on making it happen.
@logicalcat
Last time you almost posted something about Reade good enough to get started. You linked to the changed story that you said you saw, but you couldn't quote the changes you had a problem with.
Now I see you posting more stuff that's not evident. And something about how people shouldn't express their lack of enthusiasm. It's interesting how people's legitimate feelings and our natural systems for transmission of those feelings is "propaganda". Yeah, that'll fix the enthusiasm problem.
Face what you fear coward.
@Logicalcat 99
"I expect this board to ignore the red flags in her story, but at least acknowlege that the purity politics of BernieBros is a real thing and does real harm."
You mean the red flags you haven't actually displayed in a useful fashion?
I don't have to refer to Bernie Bros to talk about the abusive Biden fans. The sexism and misogyny is culture wide.
@97, consciousness razor: if literally all you're saying is that people who still have primaries should vote for Bernie if he's on their ballot, you could have just said that a lot more directly. And I wouldn't even disagree with you. Instead you were pushing back on my complaints about people saying they were not going to vote in the general. So, I have to ask, if your efforts to get Bernie to achieve a delegate lead in the remaining primaries is unsuccessful (highly probable since he's endorsed Biden!), will you vote for Biden in the general election?
@96, Mike: so, what the fuck? Should we just not even try to peacefully preserve democracy? No, fascism isn't a binary thing—there is a long, ugly slide, and we've let ourselves slide all the more precipitously recently. But that certainly doesn't mean we shouldn't try, or that we should excuse people who ignore the threat!
And the paradox of voting in NO WAY WHATSOEVER eliminates the individuals' moral obligation to vote. Because setting the norm and modeling the norm for others creates ripple effects and influences more people to vote. Stop making excuses for selfishness and apathy. How the hell can we say we believe in social justice when we're so selfish that we don't even bother to vote?!
And by the way NO ONE is saying voting is the be-all-and-end-all of civic engagement. But it is the START-all. If we don't vote, then no one cares about the rest of our activism, it will fall on ideologically opposed or distrustful ears. This is not a difficult concept.
More votes (and delegates) for Sanders will be a good thing, even if it doesn't amount to him regaining the lead in the primaries.
In addition to influencing the platform to make it more palatable for non-deranged people, there are other reasons behind it. We could also put Biden's thoroughly scandalous awfulness off to the side, if you think nothing could ever possibly come out of that. (The DNC evidently wasn't thinking that, given that they've been in such a rush to run their terrible excuse of a primary election season, while Biden has desperately attempted to simply not ruin his own campaign in yet another presidential race.)
So, never mind all of that…. What do you think happens if Biden kicks the bucket tomorrow or any time before the convention? Spoiler warning: it's not going to be Warren. And Mayor Pete could declare victory again right now if he feels like it, but it's not going to be him either.
Also, while I know the party thinks of itself as a private entity which can do whatever the fuck it wants, I think people in all of those states still have a right to vote. How fucking "directly" do I need to say (and why should it be necessary to tell you) that they should be voting for Sanders and the left should make the most of it while we still can, so that this point will finally be comprehensible to you?
LeftSidePositive: This has gone unsaid, but it's worth saying. It applies to logicalcat as well….
I cannot remember a single election-related comment of yours, where the basic message wasn't saying something negative about Sanders, his campaign, or his supporters. Or if the topic at hand happens to be Biden, the Dem establishment, the media, etc., then you pull out all of the stops to bullshit your way into a defense of them.
The result? You have zero credibility with me, as somebody who is supposedly on my side, is serious about doing the right thing as opposed to what's easiest or most convenient (for you), wants what I want, and so forth. That could change, but you would need to actually do something which changes it.
@106: If a better platform is desired, why aren't those people engaging and voting in the primaries?
Again with the "the DNC" like they're evil masterminds… um, the primaries happened on the usual schedule of primaries, until COVID. And yeah, they probably did not want Bernie remaining a viable close second because last time that's when he got really nasty and started tearing Hillary down was when he thought he had a chance at winning. But even so, regular voters preferred Biden by a very wide margin. They didn't flock to Bernie once they saw the DNC didn't like him, and if you expect to take on the opposition of the mainstream media & the GOP, you AT LEAST need to be able to outmaneuver the DNC!
I don't know the DNC bylaws about a candidate dying before the formal nomination, but per a Slate article in 2008, they don't have a formal process. This is another reason why simultaneous national ranked-choice voting would be a good thing, though!
And AGAIN—it is not necessary to tell ME that they should be voting for Sanders. You need to convince THEM. "The DNC" is not arbitrarily forcing candidate choices—Biden's lack of endorsements & low fundraising haul indicate they weren't particularly enthusiastic (and I'd wager the eagerness to coalesce against Bernie has more to do with him being a total fucking asshole in the latter half of the 2016 primary as soon as he tasted potential! Even now, don't put a bunch of fucking Stein voters in your campaign management and expect Democrats not to have a problem with you!), but the average Democrat voted for him. I literally told you I support people voting for Sanders if their primary has not happened yet. I have NEVER disagreed with this. I even said I would vote for Bernie on my ballot if he's on it! So why the fuck are you asking me?!
The ONLY thing I have been saying here is that it is categorically unacceptable for anyone to defend refusing to vote in the general election, even if it's early, even if that person might come around in November. That is a line that simply may not be crossed, and anyone who crosses it is a Trumpist whether or not they want to admit it.
@107: I have said at literally every turn that Biden sucks, I'm scared that he'll lose, and that I will vote for Bernie over Biden any day, even though I have very serious critiques of Bernie. Can you not fucking read??
There really is no alternative in the present system but to vote for Biden, and to make sure all our friends do too. But I am fucking mad about it. I would like to be able to vote for Elizabeth Warren, then Kamala Harris, then Kirsten Gillibrand, then Julian Castro, then Bernie Sanders, then basically the entire rest of the Democratic field that isn't Michale Bloomberg or Tulsi Gabbard, and THEN Biden as the last of my rankings but at least not Trump.
I imagine most Democratic voters aren't really enthused for Biden, but voted for him 1) because they want the Obama days back, or 2) they believe he's "safer" to beat Trump. And I'm fucking scared. I don't think #1 was good enough to prevent the creeping fascism of GOP, and I don't believe #2 is true, especially once the mainstream media pulls all its false equivalence horserace stops out.
Also, I AM a progressive. I support free college, free daycare, universal health care (and I even think single-payer is the best way to accomplish that!), universal basic income, automatic voter registration with vote-by-mail, Warren's wealth tax, AOC's 70% top-marginal tax rate, and I could go on. I'm just not a fucking idiot. I don't support fascist collaborators who refuse to vote or vote third party. And, if you read more carefully, you'll notice Biden was my absolute LAST choice except for Bloomberg and Gabbard.
I'm on record saying, before Bernie dropped out that if the race was still going when my state voted I would vote Bernie over Biden. I supported Warren. I tried to talk everyone I could out of Biden—but no one I know was supporting Biden anyway!
They believe that Biden is most "electable," mostly because old white rich dudes on the teevee tell them so. I passionately disagree, and like I said above I'm fucking scared that we're going through this again with a milquetoast nominee and the whole thing is screaming Kerry rehash.
NO ONE HERE DISPUTES THAT BIDEN IS A PRETTY SHITTY GUY
I'm sick of scrolling and copying & pasting. I'm sorry for all of us that the primary didn't go better. I'm sorry that the average Democratic voter does not make decisions the same way we do. But that does not change the fact that Biden is easily winning the primary, Bernie has suspended his campaign & endorsed him, and if we don't vote for him in the general people will die needlessly. This isn't difficult, and there is no reason why we should indulge performative idiocy among commenters here.
If a better platform is desired, why aren't those people engaging and voting in the primaries?
It is desired by me, and I am engaging in voting in the primaries. If it is desired by you, then why speak of "those people"?
Again with the "the DNC" like they're evil masterminds…
Incompetence has plenty to do with it. The effect is the same.
Biden's incoherent bullshit about his supposed "intentions" also comes to mind.
And AGAIN—it is not necessary to tell ME that they should be voting for Sanders. You need to convince THEM.
That's not a "we need to convince them." So you don't?
Even now, don't put a bunch of fucking Stein voters in your campaign management and expect Democrats not to have a problem with you!
Do you think lots of people know and care that a few of them voted for Stein? I don't. That crap explanation is just you throwing everything at the wall, to see what may stick. This doesn't stick.
LOL. First quote, you ranked Sanders just above Bloomberg. Trash.
I'm not saying you haven't mouthed the words, that you haven't said anything meant to appease or quiet the left or Sanders supporters or whatever. Sure you have. But there is a reason you're saying it, why it's being said in spite of the patently fucking obvious. I'm talking about your reasons for commenting, what the basic conclusions of your comments are, your whole fucking perspective.
Sorry, just above "the field" which was unnamed but isn't Bloomberg (or Gabbard). But Bloomberg would also have to be somewhere in that, and he did got more votes than any of them.
But yeah, it's definitely a great fucking sign that you put him so far down on your list.
Honestly, the distaste for Gabbard is a bad sign too … in the same boat as Bloomberg? Really? Her foreign policy is garbage, but otherwise, she's more of a leftist than Harris or Castro, arguably to the left of Warren.
Gillibrand, I just don't know, because she dropped before I had any reason to look into it.
Because those are the people you/we aren't reaching. But the Bernie diehards are the ones insisting that their candidate is the only one who can win the general, and the working class longs for them, and if only the Dems would stop endorsing Dems, they could totally win—Berners are insisting they are the true voice of the desires of the people. You yourself were trying it with the "most nonvoters don't think the parties work for them"—ok so why aren't they voting for Bernie in the primary?
No, it's really not. If people are voting to "punish the Democrats" and "send them a message," it fucking matters if they are evil masterminds holding down the true will of the people, versus well-meaning incompetents, versus kinda average people trying to hold together a massive coalition that's way too ideologically diverse for its own good but functionally stuck together due to First Past The Post voting, and what you should do for each of those is dramatically different.
Still doesn't change the fact that people are voting for him. By A Lot.
Fucking liar. I have told you OVER AND OVER AGAIN that I don't know how to convince them, and I have asked for your suggestions. You have NOTHING. But the fact remains, if people are going to pout like hell that their favorite choice didn't win the primary, they're gonna have to learn to convince other primary voters, and that if they can't do that, then "punishing" the DNC for apparently overriding the will of the people (which Sandernistas insist they represent, actual election results be damned!) makes no fucking sense.
I don't think that had any effect on the average primary voter, no. Like I have said multiple times, the average Dem primary voter believed the bullshit about Biden being "electable," and that over and over again after trauma for Republican malfeasance, the average voter craves normalcy more than anything, so it's fucking stupid for lefties to "heighten the contradictions" and let Republicans win because each time the resulting Dem is LESS liberal than the one they sabotaged!
BUT, engaged politicians sure as FUCK know that Bernie's campaign was a bunch of Stein idiots, and that ALONE makes it perfectly defensible for Dems to coalesce against him. If he didn't realize the toxicity that was indicating (and the incredibly poor judgment!), that's on him. It's also a major reason why a lot of engaged voters, particularly Warren supporters, would not support Bernie. Again, nothing in numbers to compare to the Not Extremely Online Dems, but if you're trying to build a winning progressive coalition, actively disgusting a major group of people who support your policies is a really bad idea. So stop being so stunned Bernie lost (is losing, if you insist…). He was a DEEPLY flawed candidate and the performative left needs to learn from its mistakes rather than continuing to sabotage the country because it's having a temper tantrum.
@113: You're defending GABBARD? Seriously?! She's a kook, a cultist, a homophobe, an apologist for inaction on impeachment, and an Assad apologist! I'm so fucking sick of Bernie supporters credulously glorifying everyone who kisses Bernie's ring, especially when too many of them are grifters!
John Morales says
Bernie endorses Biden as the Democratic Party candidate. Fact.
@John Morales 116
Is that a mic drop? That's definitely something loud and of significance.
GerrardOfTitanServer says
Sorry for multiple posts. Some auto-filter is eating my post, and I don't know what it is.
To cubist
Don't forget party-list voting, which I think is my preferred new voting system for congress.
To jack16
And yes, voting day should be a national holiday.
To Captain Jeep-Eep
Only thing that would fix it is packing at this point.
I think that we'd be better off impeaching certain judges as unfit instead of court packing, along with passing a few reforms, like fixing the number at 9, and/or somehow guaranteeing that every president gets exactly one appointment.
Ala Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, our voting system is a non-trivial game. In other words, to achieve your desired ends, it is necessary to modify one's own voting strategy according to the known information about the voting strategy of others. If you don't accept this, then you're being irrational, and harming yourself and a lot of other people in the process.
Like every choice that you make in your life, you never evaluate a choice and its outcomes in a vacuum. You are always evaluating choices in comparison with the other available alternative choices. That's the textbook definition of rationality – cost-benefit analysis of choices compared to alternative choices.
Protest voting is a coherent strategy. It's just a very bad strategy. Protest voting has not changed the Democratic party in the past, and there's no reason to think that it will change the Democratic party in the future. It's delusional to think that it will.
When we vote for president, we are not voting for who has the best moral character. We're voting for someone to use the powers of office for society's benefit. Those are intertwined and related questions, but they are still distinct questions. Protest voting or choosing not to vote is just sticking one's head in the sand, refusing to accept reality, instead of making the choice that is calculated to bring about the best outcome.
Also, as echoed by several people above: If you are unwilling to vote for Biden because of principles, what else have you done to change this country for the better? If all you do is vote, then you are part of the problem. "All it takes for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing", and voting is borderline doing nothing. If all you do is vote, and especially if you don't even do that basic minimum duty, then you only have yourself to blame. If you want to actually do change, it takes work. Engage friends and family and strangers in a productive way. Especially, become involved in politics and your local Democratic party establishment. The best way forward is for people like us to take over the Democratic party from within, and make it more leftist, and most importantly of all, change our freaking election system to kill the two party state. My sister has been doing that. It's difficult. It's painful. Progress is not guaranteed. However, to everyone who is complaining and moaning, while simultaneously doing nothing to improve the situation – take a look in the mirror. That's where the problem is.
@119: Beautifully said. What orgs is your sister involved with and could you share them so we could check them out? Thanks!
I am forwarding this because I want others to feel as miserable as I am. This concerns the feeble response by Democrats to the entirely predictable Trump attack ads.
"Saagar Enjeti: Biden, Media's PATHETIC Hillary Defense Against Devastating Trump Ad" at YouTube https://bit.ly/2V6eaTW
To LeftSidePositive
Some committees or something for the Michigan Democratic party. I think she was not an actual voting member of the central committee, but an alternate. She was very active. Organized protests of ICE and stuff like that. Led a social networking group for political stuff, until a couple assholes took over the organization and she just decided to bail because the hassle wasn't worth it. I think she's scaled it a lot back in the last 2 years.
Actually voting for the party hasn't achieved jack either. Allowing the installation of an architect of student debt servitude as leader is unacceptable.
And what is needed is fucking decisive action, not nibbling about the edges – add 10 or something judges at the lowest possible age, then lock it. Lock those repub bastards out, and lock them out in the cold.
Gerrard:
Protest voting is a coherent strategy. It's just a very bad strategy. Protest voting has not changed the Democratic party in the past, and there's no reason to think that it will change the Democratic party in the future.
I think Perot, Nader, and several Green party folks have influenced Dems in various ways. There have also been quite a few independents like Angus King, Jesse Ventura, Joe Lieberman, Lincoln Chafee, Charlie Crist, and of course Bernie Sanders.
I'm leaving many out who were only or mainly appealing to conservatives (like Gary Johnson and Evan McMullin, for example), since that's not about having a fairly direct influence on the Democratic party specifically. And I won't even try to list everyone in state or local offices…. This is just looking at the presidency, the US Senate and House, and state governors — all of them in recent history.
Also, note that I'm not making a statement of approval about the politicians mentioned above. (Some are pretty awful.) I'm saying it's false that they haven't changed the Democratic party, or that voting for them hasn't changed it.
So I guess the question is roughly this: what's supposed to be the difference? What makes one sort of voting pattern a "protest vote," while in other cases a similar kind of voting presumably isn't a "protest vote"? (Or if they should both count and I shouldn't presume, then you're simply wrong that it never has that kind of effect.)
To consciousness razor
I withdraw my strong claim there, and now plead partial ignorance. Still, one question for you. Given that you cited Nader, what are the facts that led you to the conclusion that Nader running third party pulled the Democratic establishment, or the Democratic voters, or whoever, towards his policy positions? Genuinely curious.
@123: Voting for the party has accomplished A LOT, actually. We have the ACA now, which, while flawed, is still saving thousands of lives. My cousin was able to marry her wife before her dad died of cancer because Obama got to appoint judges instead of McCain or Romney. Women still have the right to choose (even though Republican SCOTUS has allowed a lot of barriers). Don't fucking tell me "voting for the party" doesn't work when you fucking idiots sat out in 2000 and in 2016, not to mention 2010 and 2014! Policy and legislation was demonstrably worse under the GOP, and demonstrably better (but far from perfect) with Dems. That matters. And it matters to the families of people who are dead because of your fucking purity. And how the fuck do you expect your party to get anything done when you sit out midterms and let your voters get gerrymandered into oblivion, the House has god-knows-how-many votes to repeal the ACA, and then you turn the Senate over to fucking Mitch McConnell. You sound like a person who took one violin lesson and gave up because you didn't become Joshua Bell with that meager effort.
And you may talk about Joe Biden being "unacceptable"—boo fucking hoo. The option is that or Trump. That is reality. The world is fucked, almost half of American voters are such flaming hateful racists that they LIKE Trump's cruelty and corruption, and a sizable number of the rest are so misinformed and/or desperate for normalcy they'll nominate Biden. Like I said, I fucking hate it. But it's high time you purity idiots learned that voting third party doesn't "send a message" or push the Democratic party forward—it makes them think they need to capitulate to the center more and more. They've been drifting rightward since 1968 (and it wasn't like they were all that great beforehand, being so desperate not to seem commies that they got us into fucking Vietnam!) because the Left refused to use its political power effectively and the general public reaction to civil rights was to run screaming for soulless exploitative capitalism rather than share the New Deal or Great Society with people of color. THAT is what you guys are up against. We live in a very awful world, and instead of doing what you can to help and meeting people where they are, you just imagine that everyone already agrees with you. Well, they don't. They should. The leftist view of the world is kinder, stronger, and better founded in empirical science of sociology, economics, climate, etc. Except when you guys think about power, and you are prone to as much wishful thinking as any Pentecostal snake handler.
WHAT decisive action? Are you going to intentionally let the country fall to fascism in the hopes that you can take over afterwards?! Ask Ernst Thalmann how that worked out, idiot. Also, WHO THE FUCK IS GOING TO APPOINT THOSE 10 EXTRA JUDGES IF YOU DON'T FUCKING VOTE?
I'm sorry the world is not perfect right now. And yes, we do need to reach for broader goals. But advocating for major systemic change (off the top of my head, abolishing the Electoral College, Ranked Choice Voting, weighting each Senator's vote by 50% of their state's population percentage, converting the House to mixed-member proportional voting, national automatic voter registration, 100% mail-in voting, universal basic income, free K-16 or K-20 education, national free daycare, universal healthcare, and a jobs guarantee…) is in no way incompatible with JUST FUCKING VOTING every election. You will have MORE power if you were a constituent that put someone in their seat. You can primary them if they suck (and if you can't win a primary, that should tell you that you need to get your message out TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC instead of "punishing" the people who are reliably voting Democratic and who are trying to get at least some positive changes to happen.
Vote Democrat. Literally every time, no excuses. Dogcatcher to President. There's a lot of other activism you should be doing in terms of calling your reps, voting in primaries, organizing around legal reforms like the ones above, and so on. But all of these can only happen on a foundation of competent, non-evil governance, and at the moment, the Dems are the best we have for that. Just think how much MORE we could have accomplished in the last 3 years if Dreamers were safe, if we didn't have to double check every WH statement for blatant lies, if we didn't have to crowd airports to protest the "Muslim ban," etc., etc. We could have put that energy to accomplishing NEW things, instead of barely stopping half of the shit that's going down right now.
To begin with, there is of course the earlier part of his career. This excerpt from his wiki page will surely grab your attention:
In the 1970s, Nader turned his attention to environmental activism, becoming a key leader in the antinuclear power movement, described by one observer as the "titular head of opposition to nuclear energy".
That said, although I don't want to go on a long tangent about this — so please don't — I still disagree with you about the size, scope, effects, etc., of activism against nuclear power today, which is not the same as it was then. (I bet we do agree that opposition to nuclear weapons is a good thing and is unlike the energy issue.)
More on his activism, admittedly prior to the 2000 campaign but which helps to form the relevant context:
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, through his ongoing work with Public Citizen, Nader continued to be involved in issues of consumer rights and public accountability. His work testifying before Congress, drafting model legislation, and organizing citizen letter-writing and protest efforts, earned him direct credit for the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Clean Water Act, Consumer Product Safety Act, and Whistleblower Protection Act.
Nader had enough people supporting him for some (Dems or others on the left) to seriously think of him as a spoiler for Gore in 2000, even to this day. From the wiki page on that campaign:
Nader and many of his supporters believed that the Democratic Party had drifted too far to the right. Throughout the campaign, Nader noted he had no worries about taking votes from Al Gore. He stated, "Isn't that what candidates try to do to one another—take votes?" Nader insisted that any failure to defeat Bush would be Gore's responsibility: "Al Gore thinks we're supposed to be helping him get elected. I've got news for Al Gore: If he can't beat the bumbling Texas governor with that terrible record, he ought to go back to Tennessee."
Among others, he got support from highly-influential people like Michael Moore, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, & Christopher Hitchens. Besides the Green party themselves, there were these political parties: Reform, Vermont Progressive, United Citizens of SC, & Rainbow Coalition of MA. Also a bunch of politicians, unions, newspapers, and so forth.
More fun facts: he was endorsed by Phil Donahue, Willie Nelson, Bill Murray, Linda Ronstadt, and 2 of 3 Beastie Boys (apparently not Mike D). Still trying to wrap my head around that.
This is how that page (linked above) describes his platform:
Nader campaigned against the pervasiveness of corporate power and spoke on the need for campaign finance reform. His campaign also addressed problems with the two party system, voter fraud, environmental justice, universal healthcare, affordable housing, free education including college, workers' rights and increasing the minimum wage to a living wage. He also focused on the three-strikes rule, exoneration for prisoners for drug related non-violent crimes, legalization of commercial hemp and a shift in tax policies to place the burden more heavily on corporations than on the middle and lower classes. He opposed pollution credits and giveaways of publicly owned assets.
It's hard to demonstrate what causes what, and besides, there are typical multiple causes for the interesting things we care about. But it is definitely the case that Dem voters (and some Dem politicians) have taken all of those issues more seriously since then.
Sorry, I should have addressed #127 to Gerrard. It may not be a satisfactory response for you, and if not, I'd be genuinely curious why not.
@125: consciousness razor is referring to how Democrats were so moved leftwards by Nader's influence that they unanimously opposed the Iraq War and impeached Bush as soon as they got the House majority, and how Bernie Sanders easily won the Democratic primary this time because protest voting has influenced the Democratic Party so much… oh, no, wait. Consciousness razor is a fucking idiot and wrong about basically everything. Sorry I got that backwards.
@124: I don't know whether you're being stupid or callous, but let me just say that there is no evidence WHATSOEVER that the Democratic party shifting leftward wouldn't have happened if Democrats were actually holding power through that time (and, I might point out, evidence to the contrary: look at the remarkable progress we made on LGBTQ rights while Obama was in office, even though that was not his platform. Even protest movements were thriving: Occupy Wall St, Shout Your Abortion, Black Lives Matter, Moms Demand Action, and other progressive activism during that time. It's not like having a Dem in power saps all reformist spirit from people!). But, what I will say, is that if you think the faltering steps this country has made leftwards in 2000-2008 were worth the presidency of George W Bush and the uncountable but probable millions of deaths due to our wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, then you're a fucking ghoul.
@127: Nader didn't win the election. Bush did, and then millions of people died needlessly, our economy tanked, a conservative SCOTUS was cemented for a generation including further barriers to voting rights, campaign finance reform, gerrymandering and other major ongoing impediments to genuine democracy and the ability of voters to hold the state accountable, and batshit opinions on the Second Amendment (also, expiration of the Assault Rifle ban, anyone?) DC vs Heller, nearly a decade of inaction on climate change, and just to top it all off he let one of our major cities be drowned and suffer post-hurricane chaos because he put a fucking Arabian horse trader in charge of FEMA. But yeah, that was definitely worth it for the endorsement of Linda Ronstadt.
And after Nader, Dems capitulated to Bush for YEARS until he fucked shit up so badly they finally (almost) got a spine but still didn't impeach him or try him for war crimes when they finally got power.
But hey, he got cool people to endorse him! Yay! Symbolism is really what matters in politics, not preventing the deaths of millions of people or actually having the opportunity to shape policy! You disgust me. You're not just a fucking idiot, you're also a moral monster of a genuinely twisted kind. Shame on you.
LeftSidePositive, #129:
You're implying these are both true:
— some Dems did move leftward, in some respects
— some didn't move leftward, in other respects (Note that this doesn't always refer to the very same politicians or voters as above, but in some cases it might.)
My point isn't that these are inconsistent, because they're not. There's nothing factually wrong about either of those statements.
But you're going to attack me on both? That's definitely contradictory. So you refute yourself, and I shouldn't need to do any more than point it out for you.
No, you fucking idiot, I'm telling you that there is no evidence THAT THROWING THE ELECTION TO DUBYA OR TRUMP was a necessary condition of that leftward movement. You have tried to imply causation in protest voting, but that is absurd because when Dems have come to power (including in cases where the protest vote was practically nonexistent, such as 2008) there has been no measurable decrease in moving leftward. There is a general trend of some factions of the Democratic party to move left that is true regardless of protest voting, and you are trying to take credit when it is convenient. Your logic is like noticing that a 12 year old is taller than they were at 8 and saying the period when they were nine when they took piano lessons was worth it because it helped them grow. Moreover, you are ignoring the horrific costs of protest voting in terms of lives lost (which makes you a fucking ghoul). You're also ignoring notable rightward shifts in Dems SPECIFICALLY AS A RESULT of losing elections. For instance, how they were so cowardly about the Iraq War… or, if you like, how your beloved St. Bernard said he would work with Trump as soon as Trump won and tried to validate Trump's win as anti-establishment. And even now, the fact that voters are scared and chose Biden because he seemed "electable" is a demonstrable rightward drift from Clinton. And even when they win, Democrats are unable to fully undo the harms that Republicans did in their last term—Obama and Guantanamo come to mind.
So, to summarize, you are noting extremely mild cultural leftward shifts (shifts that, even if they were truly a result of protest voting—which they're not—would be woefully inadequate in the face of millions of preventable deaths, you absolute monster), proposing absolutely no mechanism whatsoever by which they were caused by protest voting, ignoring the fact that the same cultural leftward shifts also occurred with no/minimal protest voting, ignoring demonstrable rightward results from protest voting, AND ignoring the needless millions of extra deaths that your strategy caused. Fuck you.
I bet we do agree that opposition to nuclear weapons is a good thing and is unlike the energy issue.
Quickly: Weapons proliferation was and continues to be a central argument against nuclear power, and there is plenty of spillover, such as Nader's fearmongering on this topic, such as "the living will envy the dead". Nader is one of the central figures in the origin of the anti-nuclear Green environmental movement, and he came with some of the most extreme dishonest and inaccurate rhetoric, and for that, I actually think Nader is one of the most evil and blameworthy people to ever live, right up there with Mark Jacobson, Robert Kehoe, and Hitler. If you have the inclination, please read this at least regarding Nader:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Cohen_(physicist)
Ok. Maybe you're right. I don't know if you are right. My gut still says that there are better options besides protest voting, and that protest voting does more harm than good, and that protest voters are generally morally despicable hypocrites for pretending to hold the moral high ground when they're part of the problem because they haven't got off their asses to do anything substantive, compared to the reality which is that they did barely nothing by just (protest) voting. If someone protest votes who is also politically active in other ways, then I have at least some respect for that person and position.
Still, I have much to think about, and if I have the time and inclination, much to research.
Just explaining where I'm coming from in case you don't know, and I think you don't. I agree with a lot of what you say. However, the first amendment does prohibit campaign finance limits, and the court got that right. The court also got the second amendment right. I'm not saying that these are desirable policy outcomes, but I am saying that these are the correct judicial outcomes according to proper jurisprudence, separation of legislative and judicial powers, and rule of law.
In particular, the "assault rifle ban", more properly known as the "federal assault weapons ban", is an absolute joke which did absolutely nothing. It banned guns by cosmetic features and not by how dangerous they are. I wish you would spend your energy on actually productive gun control legislation instead of spending precious political capital on do-nothing legislation. The anti-gun lobby and their legislation is a joke, full of prideful ignorance and do-nothing legislation. The do-nothing legislation is worse than useless – it makes the other side hate us more, costing us on other important issues, and passing do-nothing legislation reduces the energy of our side because they think that they have accomplished something when they have not.
I think I absolutely agree with the other critiques that you raised in those recent posts regarding the unfortunate events that have transpired.
@133: no, the court did not get campaign finance right. Money is not speech. Note the difference between getting out of a speeding ticket by telling a police officer "I'm sorry I was speeding, I need to get to my ailing grandmother" (speech) vs "Here is $300 to ignore the fact that I was speeding" (fucking bribery).
Yes, the assault weapons ban helped reduce mass shooting deaths: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30188421
And yes, anti-gun legislation is effective, even if not perfect: https://www.wired.com/story/the-looser-a-states-gun-laws-the-more-mass-shootings-it-has/
https://lawcenter.giffords.org/scorecard/
DC vs Heller was constitutional nonsense and relied on a theory of the second amendment referring to individual firearm ownership which was not only completely ahistorical, it was even called ahistorical nonsense by CONSERVATIVE legal scholars as recently as the 1960s.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/04/evaluating-tara-reades-claims
I havent read the thread yet but this article is convincing. He uses testimony from experts and since the beginning ive said we should listen to experts on this (prefferably from victims themselves). Im not fully convinced but its winning me over and i might have been wrong.
Of course every left leaning Bernie writer does the foolish action of ignoring or downplaying berniebros. Baseless accusations my ass. Ignore them at your peril fellow bernie supporters. Everything ive said about them has so far still true.
@ brony
I am facing what i fear. I fear that leftist are too stupid and incompetent to gain traction. Stop projecting. And as for my posting about Reade when I first talked about them, the relevent quotes were there. You just didnt want to read the article which contain them. Im not doing your work for you.
Jesus thisnisnwhat I get for not reading the thread.
@brony.
If you still think spreading conspiracies about Seth Rich being murdered, sexist harrassment, primary rigging, and calling Biden a fascist is toxic berniebro behavior then you are an idiot. We've all experienced this. Some on these very boards.
And no the existence of sexist Biden fans does not erase change anything. Because out of the two toxic camps one is actually helping fascism.
Like I said. Ignore berniebros as our own peril. They stand in the way of leftism gaining ground. Not the centrists.
Or do you want to tell me with a straight face that probernie social media was not rife with conspiracy theories like the one I mentioned? Because this bernie fan remembers. Including bad experiences from personal experienc. Or these experiences dont matter?
Also brony i notice you ignore most of my points. Is it a self fullfilling prophecy or not? I say it is.
And until you start posting useful things connected to your feelings about the Biden accusation you're not getting anything. You don't deserve it yet.
I'm going to poke at what I feel like and that's all. Start quoting things to go with your feelings and I'll be more accommodating.
It's fascinating how your 137 just makes a bunch of shit up. You can't quote what you have strong feelings about so you dump more strong feelings attached to nothing.
Frederic Bourgault-Christie says
@27: I intend to vote Biden this year, voting Dem for the first time in my life. So hopefully you'll be able to listen when I say that your arguments are largely full of shit. If you listen for a fraction of a second, people constantly talk about the "mandate" that a candidate gets from votes. Voting for Biden will be interpreted by some as an enthusiastic endorsement. We do not have a system in place for me to say "I am voting for Biden but I don't like it". And the cost for voting for any other candidate but the one you want is that that party doesn't build. It is actually the exact same cost as any reformist enterprise: we put resources into an imperfect solution, which then may cause real human beings to become dismissive of the actual solution that we want. It happened with Obamacare and Obama.
In general, it is absolutely possible for all of us to be deeply dissatisfied with Biden, even worrying that he may put a nice face on continuing fascist trends or merely hold the line and lose valuable time in pushing back against fascists leaving them ready to win again in four or eight years, without throwing temper tantrums or anything else. We will not find people receptive to long-term change, the kind needed to defang Trump's base and energize huge swaths of the American public who are burnt out and not participating, with Biden. Our best case scenario now is elect Biden and then put massive pressure on him to gain what progressive ground we can.
Biden has been a CAUSE of many of these problems, anyone who thinks he will genuinely do that much is a rube.
Not that it matters, the dems have in all likelihood thrown the election already.
@brony
Do you want to say with a straight face that pro bernie social media is not rife with conspiracy talk?
Also brony wtf is your problem with feelings? Peoplenhave them. We are not robots. I also had points which you refuse to comment on.
Nader is one of the central figures in the origin of the anti-nuclear Green environmental movement,
I can agree with that much. We don't need to be on the same page about whether this was a good or bad influence, so we can table that for another time. I was only making the point that it would be incoherent for you to also believe his 2000 campaign was inconsequential.
It moved his positions (generally, not just anti-nuclear ones) into the spotlight, where they could be seen as less fringe and more mainstream. Because he was presidential candidate who got a significant amount of attention and news coverage and so forth, during and after the race. It's enough to make both you and LSP think he's the fucking devil, a full 20 years later. Whatever you call it, that's not nothing.
My gut still says that there are better options besides protest voting,
Before we even get to that argument, or your gut as the case may be…. I was looking for some clarity about what is supposed to count as "protest voting" in your book, but that's not clear.
protest voters are generally morally despicable hypocrites for pretending to hold the moral high ground when they're part of the problem because they haven't got off their asses to do anything substantive, compared to the reality which is that they did barely nothing by just (protest) voting. If someone protest votes who is also politically active in other ways, then I have at least some respect for that person and position.
Implicitly, the problem doesn't appear to involve (e.g.) those who voted for a candidate like Biden in the primary. That's in addition to Delaware voters who kept putting him in the Senate, in seven elections from 1972 to 2008. If it did, then it's not so obvious how adding fuel to that fire is actually a way to put it out.
Look, nobody has had to convince me that the Republicans are a problem. That's been clear to me for decades, before I was old enough to vote as a matter of fact. It's still not the case that they are The problem. (And since it can always get more frustrating, some act as if the problem were one specific Republican named Trump.)
What I'm saying that you just won't get anywhere with me, if you don't accept that the Dems also have a big role to play in our (multiple) political problems. And by "accept," I don't just mean say the words aloud, then pretend like they're not really true. You have to own it, and then actually make use of that fact. If you're being consistent about it, that should change the way you think and talk about the numerous problems we actually face and need to solve. That's something I'd like to see, and I will happily defend that position all day and every day.
From The New Republic: Don't Fear the Anti-Biden Socialist. Worth reading the whole thing, but I'll quote this part:
The conversations about the concessions Biden might make to win them over has focused on his stances on issues like health care and climate change. But if Biden wants progressive votes, he should also pledge to make those votes matter more by endorsing the effort to bypass the Electoral College by interstate compact. He should also renounce his support for the Senate filibuster, which grants the most conservative parts of the country veto power over policies most Americans support and will make much of the agenda he's urging people to the polls for impossible. It's not obvious that Biden will take suggestions like this seriously and he ultimately doesn't have to—the election isn't going to rest on committed progressives, and it seems clear that Biden believes being president is the only truly critical item on his presidential platform.
Those who find this dispiriting should assuage their disappointment with how the Democratic primary turned out by involving themselves in other political efforts. Engage with a race somewhere down-ballot. Organize a workplace or an apartment complex. Plan a run for office yourself or, alternatively, a demonstration that might bring people to the streets whenever the coronavirus crisis passes. Even when they fail, these and other forms of political activity can be much more influential and consequential than whatever you do in the privacy of a voting booth.
@141: "Mandate" is a media-driven bit of nonsense. Remember how they pretended Bush had a mandate after he lost the popular vote in 2000 but Obama totally didn't have a mandate and that we were still a center-right country after he won handily in 2008?! Moreover, the people who crow about "mandates" almost exclusively refer to it in terms of a Democratic-Republican duopoly. If a Democrat's approval rating goes from 52% to 51%, that is assumed to be net gain toward Republicans, even if that 1% is all people disapproving from the left. Did anyone claim for A FUCKING MINUTE that Dubya had less of a mandate because of Nader voters? Was he exhorted to moderate or change his policy in any way because of their votes? Of course not. So the way to push back on media narratives like that is not to excuse idiots who sabotage Democrats, but rather to comment, criticize, and push back when disingenuous media personalities pretend the elected Democrat is the be-all-and-end-all of the liberal spectrum.
But more importantly, voting doesn't work by measuring the strength of an endorsement. It ONLY determines who gets power for that term. That's how it works, and spin doctors in the media will say just about anything and most of it VERY disconnected from actual voting anyway (for instance: Trump lost by 3 million votes, but the fucking NYT decides to do a redneck safari once a month no matter what because the fact that he WON by electoral college standards has given rise to the appearance of a mandate, even if the votes do not back that up). No one goes around interviewing Jill Stein voters in diners and contemplating what those votes did for Trump's "mandate"
And if you read carefully, you would note that I am a proponent of Ranked Choice Voting—did you notice in the EIGHT prior times I mentioned it, including the comment to which you're replying?! In addition to y'know, not letting the world burn down when you don't get what you want, that would let your desired party build as more people rank it first, while the second-choice rankings can actually run the country instead of absolute fascists. If Biden won only after the second round after more liberal choices were eliminated, that would very clearly say that a lot of people liked someone better AND it would better reflect the nuances in voters' choices.
In the current system, however, voting is not a place for nuanced feelings. But you can vote for Biden and say that you don't like it in newspaper articles, demonstrations, collecting signatures for petitions opposing his policies, calling your representatives, contacting his office directly about policy choices of which you disapprove, etc. But no one gives a shit if people don't vote.
And no, the left doesn't get to say SHIT about Obama being less than receptive to them after Obamacare when their inaction in the 2010 midterms cost us to lose the House and gerrymandered away the voting power of millions of Democratic voters. Democrats didn't become "dismissive of the actual solution you want." They lost power and the House went from supporting healthcare to trying to repeal the ACA, because of the fucking Republicans.
I'm genuinely confused as to why you feel the need to tell me it is possible to be dissatisfied with Biden?! Have you literally read nothing I've written on this thread? Have I said a single good thing about Biden AT ALL? Did you somehow fail to notice that in comment #24 I even said that I thought he would be inadequate to resist the creeping fascism of the GOP?
In conclusion, please read more carefully before you try to claim someone's arguments are full of shit, because it makes you look like an utter dumbass.
@142: HOW have the Dems "thrown the election"? Are you seriously unaware of the fact that average rank-and-file Democratic voters chose Biden? Do you think they just shouldn't get to vote? Do you think their votes shouldn't matter? How exactly would you ensure that YOUR worldview got to be the one that would trample over the will of millions of primary voters instead of being trampled?
@145:
I was only making the point that it would be incoherent for you to also believe his 2000 campaign was inconsequential.
Yeah, it was extremely consequential. It allowed Bush to take power and resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent people. You have failed to demonstrate a SINGLE way it achieved anything good, though.
It moved his positions (generally, not just anti-nuclear ones) into the spotlight, where they could be seen as less fringe and more mainstream.
But those positions had no POWER for almost a decade. And there are many, many more ways to get positions into the mainstream than letting millions of people die.
Because he was presidential candidate who got a significant amount of attention and news coverage and so forth, during and after the race.
Did Nader actually get attention for his policies, or just for being a spoiler? Did his news coverage actually RESULT in anything at a rate faster than what would have happened if Gore were president?
It's enough to make both you and LSP think he's the fucking devil, a full 20 years later. Whatever you call it, that's not nothing.
That's because he IS the fucking devil, and you are an enabler. We are still suffering from the cost of Bush's wars in Iraq, 20 years later. We are still dealing with the tarnish to our national reputation from torture, 20 years later. We are still suffering infringements on our voting rights because of SCOTUS justices that were placed on the court as a result of what Nader did 20 years ago. We are suffering the environmental effects of delays in action on climate change, when we could have made much more progress with a Democrat in office.
Protest voting is any voting for anyone other than the two most likely candidates, and it is a morally despicable thing to do. Change the system so you can make a non-duopolistic vote count, but don't just let people die to show off your purity.
Implicitly, the problem doesn't appear to involve (e.g.) those who voted for a candidate like Biden in the primary. That's in addition to Delaware voters who kept putting him in the Senate, in seven elections from 1972 to 2008.
That is a DIFFERENT problem. But you're not going to solve that problem by protest voting. You are only going to solve THAT problem by reaching out, educating, and changing the hearts and minds of those voters who wanted Biden in the primary or in the Delaware Senate. You have REPEATEDLY failed to show any understanding of why it is important to do that, and you have refused to even ATTEMPT to contemplate how to accomplish that.
The fact remains there are a lot of average Americans who think Biden is good. That SUCKS. But those Americans are not going to be swayed by your protest voting, and from here it just looks like you want to punish millions of people with death for not already having your political philosophy, instead of convincing them.
Given that we live in a country where a significant chunk of voters want Biden, and those voters DO NOT WANT WHAT YOU WANT, and another significant chunk of voters want Trump, you need to face the fact that you can help the less-awful option, or you can abandon people to die. Those are your choices. After you make one of those choices, you can ALSO try to reach out to people and change hearts and minds long-term, but those are totally separate issues.
What I'm saying that you just won't get anywhere with me, if you don't accept that the Dems also have a big role to play in our (multiple) political problems.
AND HOW THE FUCK DO YOU THINK PROTEST VOTING AFFECTS THIS? It doesn't. It EXACERBATES those problems among Democratic decision-makers and causes them to play more to the center because they cannot trust the Left.
And by "accept," I don't just mean say the words aloud, then pretend like they're not really true.
You're lying about what everyone on this thread has said to you, motherfucker.
If you're being consistent about it, that should change the way you think and talk about the numerous problems we actually face and need to solve.
HOW? That's what we keep asking you. HOW? There is no way whatsoever that anything less than complete commitment to voting blue in the general election will solve any of these problems (and will kill a lot of people). We also need to find a way to break through to people who are more conservative than we'd like. AGAIN I ask you: HOW? And stop pretending anyone here is in denial of how bad Biden is. But we recognize that in the current political landscape, he is by far preferred to other, better Dems, and it's not because of machinations of the DNC, it's because ordinary voters chose him even though they had other options, who were much better-funded and campaigned much better. How should we reach those people? How should we get apathetic voters to vote? How should we change the opinion of the average rank-and-file Dem? THOSE are the questions we need to be asking going forward, and they have absolutely no bearing on the question "Should we vote for Biden in the general election now that he is the only Democrat running?" to which the answer is an unequivocal yes.
None of this changes the fact that if Biden doesn't win we will lose most features of democracy and the rule of law in this country, if not all of them. None of this changes the fact that a lot of the Extremely Online left aren't even PRETENDING to care about policy olive branches and only want to sabotage the country in revenge for their favorite not winning.
Also the entire fucking article is garbage, and utterly fails to acknowledge the dampening effects of organizations like the DSA on the behavior of their members. And what the DSA would get in return from endorsing Biden is FEWER DEAD PEOPLE. Safeguarding of our (admittedly flawed) democracy. The fact that the whole article places the DSA's obligations in voting in terms of increasing the visibility of the DSA and not helping Americans shows why "anti-Biden socialists" are fucking trash. And it indulges in the fallacy of "safe states" that allowed WI, MI, and PA to fall to Trump because of Stein voters. AND it tries to pull the same trick you keep trying to conflate the busy/disengaged voter with the moral monsters who claim to know the stakes and yet throw their votes away.
This is what we've been saying here all along, except that the article conflates the individual small incremental effect of voting with the catastrophic effect of masses of people believing their votes don't matter. Moreover, none of this is relevant to the fact that third-party voters and intentional non-voters are inexcusable moral monsters.
It allowed Bush to take power and resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent people.
Centrists pushing a candidate like Gore resulted in Bush's election. That is in fact their responsibility, not Ralph Nader's. As with Trump, it should've been relatively easy to beat GWB, but they failed. Nader didn't have or make Gore's record, he didn't write his platform, he didn't pick who would be advising and strategizing for the campaign … those people are responsible for themselves.
Even when they lost, it was still only an election result. Biden was the most prominent and powerful Democrat supporter of the war in Iraq; and in 1998, he was arguing we should invade the country again, which is obviously well before the 2000 election.
HOW? That's what we keep asking you. HOW? There is no way whatsoever that anything less than complete commitment to voting blue in the general election will solve any of these problems (and will kill a lot of people).
What I said was about thinking and talking, and you substituted that with voting. I'll make the distinction very clear for you: you're not voting here in this thread, for example.
We also need to find a way to break through to people who are more conservative than we'd like.
It seems to me that you actually have the whole conservative Dem thing locked up pretty tight. Your problem has been about figuring out how to connect not with those on the right but with those who are more to left than some may like. Isn't that the more pressing issue for you at the moment?
So what's the message for the left? We're all pieces of shit who should STFU and obey orders? That's a fucking joke, so my advice is to come up with an approach that's slightly less idiotic.
@logicalcat 143
I can understand being concerned about conspiracy minded people among any group, and your concern about the ones among Bernie
I don't have a problem with feelings. I'm interested in what they are attached to. I can't address your points until you can show the "red flags", that's non-literal.
You did post this,
What is the purpose of such acknowledgement? Why does anyone have to mention Bernie supporters when you don't show the actual text or time point of audio that represents this non-literal reference?
I'm not a D and I have a friend that's convinced Biden is a rapist and I see people critisizing the general discussion of Tara Reade's story.
Sorry the reply to logicalcat @143 Should say,
"I can understand being concerned about conspiracy minded people among any group, and your concern about the ones among Bernie [supporters. But you haven't actually shown a red flag and as I make a habit of asking people for their reasons for dismissing an accusation."
Actually "critisizing general discussion of Tara Reade's story" is a spectrum that includes outright misogynist harassment.
You put a connection between a bare assertion about Tara Reade's story and mentioning toxic Bernie supporters, and you did talk at the board so I pecked at it.
SC (Salty Current) says
I realize I'm whistling in the wind at this point, but a couple of links for the record:
Speaking of getting people killed, I can't think of better words for this than absolutely ghoulish
Same with this.
What is the right response?
Or "too late"?
Or maybe just keep it simple with a plain old "fuck you"?
OK, I'll bite. In what manner is that supposed to be ghoulish, CR?
Centrists pushing a candidate like Gore resulted in Bush's election.
No, you fucking idiot. Gore won 10.9 million votes in the primary to Bill Bradley's 3 million. That's not "centrists pushing a candidate like Gore." That's VOTERS overwhelmingly choosing him. I'm sorry the electorate is not already where you want them to be, but stop pretending candidates are being dictated to you from on high, and learn the fact that your view is a tiny minority among Americans. You can and should change that over time, but that requires WORK to go and change hearts and minds, not to stomp off when you don't have your preference handed to you. And in the meantime you have a clear moral obligation to vote for harm reduction.
That is in fact their responsibility, not Ralph Nader's.
Fuck you. If you had a SHRED of intellectual honesty, you'd realize that a major party candidate actually has MULTIPLE constituencies they need to appeal to, and not all of them have your wishlist. You had your chance in the primary, but if the voters aren't buying what you're selling then it's time to work together and think of how to convince more people next time. Anyone with half a brain needs to understand the consequences of their actions in electoral politics, and it's stupid and selfish as fuck to declare you only want to show off your individual (fake) "principles" and not care about what's going to actually HAPPEN. Anyone who ACTUALLY cared about consumer protection, nuclear proliferation, the environment, etc., would recognize that they have a responsibility to make the person able to do the most good on those things ACTUALLY hold power.
blockquote>As with Trump, it should've been relatively easy to beat GWB, but they failed.
Oh, fuck you. Fuck you all TO HELL AND BACK, and the horse you fucked off on, for declaring Gore or Clinton having such an "easy" path to winning when idiot third party voters thought that very ease made it "safe" to "express themselves" and then sabotage those results. Yeah, it's not easy to win when you have to hold together a large coalition of diverse views and part of that coalition decides that they just don't want to fucking help and don't care what happens to the country as a result of their vote. Fuck you for ignoring that the mainstream media did EVERYTHING they could to pretend false equivalence in both of those races. Fuck you for ignoring the fact that Jeb Bush was the fucking governor of Florida and had his thumb on the scale in a major way. Fuck you for ignoring that not only did Gore win the popular vote, he would have won Florida by about 2000 votes if not for mistaken votes for Pat Buchanan through poor ballot design. Fuck you for ignoring a conservative Supreme Court and Florida state legislature and their refusal to address remedies to those voting irregularities in good faith. Fuck you for ignoring the fact that Democratic voters are much more likely to face structural hurdles to voting and could really use a safety margin of reliable votes from engaged voters who ostensibly want the same things they do. Fuck you for pretending that Repubilcans are easy to beat when they cheat their asses off and there are A LOT of stupid racists in this country. Fuck you for refusing to acknowledge that we are ALL in this together and we have to combine to win in a plurality vote system. Fuck you for preening like your vote has to be "earned" with the perfect platform instead of realizing that there are a lot of people who have different opinions on that platform than you, and voting is not about stroking your ego, but about protecting the people who will be most harmed by Republican governance.
Even when they lost, it was still only an election result.
WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?! Millions of people died in the Iraq war, you shithead, and that travesty WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED IF GORE WAS PRESIDENT. Fuck you. Just fucking fucking fuck you.
Biden was the most prominent and powerful Democrat supporter of the war in Iraq; and in 1998, he was arguing we should invade the country again, which is obviously well before the 2000 election.
Yeah, Biden sucks. We know that Biden sucks. But the loss in 2000 made the Democrats much MORE willing to appease Bush because that's what they thought the mood of the country was. I notice you've still failed to provide any evidence of any leftward push actually attributable to third-party voting. And Biden was only Obama's VP because Obama needed an old school Dem white guy to assuage skittish, racist voters. Because, you know, we are an imperfect country with an imperfect electorate and we can't win without compromising with some pretty shitty people because at least they're better than the outright evil people. But Biden would not be a serious presidential candidate EXCEPT that the Left fucked shit up so badly by refusing to vote for Clinton, that the rightward slide of the Democratic Party continues, due in VERY large part to the Left refusing to be an effective political force.
We're talking to people on this thread who are THREATENING NOT TO VOTE, dumbass. You are talking about making excuses for third-party voters, and making laughable, unsubstantiated, incoherent claims that they push the Democratic party leftward, despite all evidence to the contrary.
No, you fucking idiot. We need to reach out and convince conservative Dems not to be so conservative anymore. If you can't do that, you will NEVER get the country you want. Your perfect candidates will NEVER win anything if the voters don't want them. Moreover, it's not a question of "connecting" with those on the left. You are perfectly aware of the stakes, but you're selfish fucking assholes who don't care about the consequences of your votes. You pretend like the GOP doesn't exist. And, moreover, you guys are a net negative electorally. I wish that weren't true, but it is. Bernie-backed candidates in 2018 performed WORSE than generic Dems, and basically didn't win a single competitive seat. You have just enough people to fuck up a close race, but not enough to actually make up for the people we'd lose by catering to you.
You idiots LOST THE FUCKING PRIMARY. Deal with it. You threw away the 2016 election, and now you have a candidate who is MORE conservative because THAT'S WHAT TRAUMATIZED VOTERS VOTE FOR. You have a chance to make your case, you should make it in the primary, but if you lose as badly as you did (2.7 million votes, btw!), then yes, you need to be team players and think of the good of the country. It's not "obeying orders," it's respecting the fact that other voters have rights too, you selfish little shits, and if you didn't do the work to actually communicate your ideas to them and convince them that your ideas are better, then you don't get to throw a temper tantrum and expect us to come running to you WHEN YOU LOST. And this isn't even about "approaching" you. It's abundantly, painfully clear that performative leftists are every bit the intellectually dishonest, magical thinking, irrational dupes as homeopaths and Pentecostal snake-handlers. You are completely impervious to evidence and have built up a bunch of ridiculous psychological defenses to prevent confronting the horrific consequences of your choices. You haven't even expressed the SLIGHTEST concern or respect for the millions of needless deaths caused by Republican administrations. You will compulsively quote every harm that a mainstream Democrat has done, but then you treat the horrors of Republican governance like unavoidable natural disasters, totally worth it for the endorsement of a Beastie Boy. This isn't even about convincing you. You will do the right thing or you won't. This is about making sure that you selfish assholes are confronted about the consequences of your behavior, and that social justice spaces do not become targets for your self-defeating, Republican-enabling, wishful-thinking, denialist behavior to metastasize to others.
@SC, thanks for the links. I thought this one tweet by @KeithELaughlin captured it particularly well:
Reading these threads is mystifying. These folks talk about "power" and a "movement" but they live in their own world, disdainful of what it takes to succeed in real world politics but bitterly resentful that the world doesn't conform to their wishes anyway.
LeftSidePositive @156, that was an epic peroration!
It's pretty simple; if nobody votes Biden should he be the candidate against Trump, Trump will most certainly romp it in. If, on the contrary, everyone voted Biden because they'd rather not have a second Trump term, that certitude would not exist.
It's not a categorical imperative, but the outcomes in either case do contrast markedly.
For the record, I didn't vote for Nader. I don't think that changes anything, but perhaps you think it does. I'll quote from the wiki page about his campaign again:
When asked about claims of being a spoiler, Nader typically points to the controversial Supreme Court ruling that halted a Florida recount, Gore's loss in his home state of Tennessee, and the "quarter million Democrats who voted for Bush in Florida."
Not such a strong candidate, by the looks of it.
But put aside those 250,000 people for a moment. Gore lost to Bush by 537 votes in Florida (officially), yet Nader was also not the only other person in the race. Buchanan and Browne were both right-wing candidates who got over thirty thousand votes in Florida, which mostly likely would have gone for Bush. Yet he did win the state, very close to the number Gore received, and it's certainly right to blame the Supreme Court for their decision.
In any case, a vote for Nader was not a vote for Bush, any more than it was a vote for another non-Gore candidate like Buchanan. Attributing Bush's victory to Nader just ignores a whole lot that unfortunately went wrong in Gore's campaign. Nader may look like a convenient scapegoat, if you disregard many of those details, but that's all it seems to be.
Millions of people died in the Iraq war, you shithead, and that travesty WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED IF GORE WAS PRESIDENT.
It would not have happened if Dems like Biden weren't inclined to do whatever the president wanted. And as I said, that is in fact what Biden himself already wanted, as he had stated as a Senator in the Senate, prior to President Dubya becoming President Dubya. The election itself didn't determine that we'd invade Iraq in 2003, and that is simply a fact — an inconvenient truth, to use Gore's phrase. Another fact is that Congress has the power to declare war, not the president. GWB was not in Congress, while people like Biden were.
@159: quoting Nader's utterly irresponsible statements of his delusions as to why running third party is ok doesn't change a damn fucking thing I said above. NADER was the one who was taking likely votes away FROM GORE, hence why he is blamed, you idiot. Again, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU that you gloat over "not such a strong candidate" and ignore the fact that MILLIONS OF PEOPLE DIED because he didn't win. This isn't a high school cafeteria. Candidates are not here for our entertainment & critique. WE need to contribute to our society to pick the people less likely to get others killed.
Also, how INCREDIBLY dishonest not to look at trends in the Southern Strategy and the consolidation of Republican voting in the South. Gore wasn't "a weak candidate" because he didn't carry Tennessee—Tennessee has been drifting rightward since Nixon, like most of the South, only flipping on major Democratic sweeps, and has not gone for ANY Democrats since Bill Clinton (and even then it was only by 2.5% when he won the country by 8.5%!). That's not Gore as a particularly weak candidate, that's major demographic and ideological trends as the Southern Strategy consolidated. Similarly, as to Nader making excuses for Democrats in Florida voting for Bush? It's fucking Florida. There are A LOT of people in the South who were registered Dems pre-Reagan and never changed their party affiliation, but functionally vote identically to Republicans. This is a basic reflection of broader political trends in those regions, and something we should understand and know what we're up against, not to gloat about a candidate who has to hold together a disparate coalition.
And yes, a vote for Nader helps Bush. It is a failure to cancel out a Bush voter, which helps Bush. This is a first-past-the-post voting system, so you have the two groups likely to win, and if you do not vote for the one most aligned with you you are helping the other major party candidate you wouldn't have otherwise voted for. That is math. You are giving up the chance to be the difference of 49.9 -> 50.1% in a major candidate winning, to being 1 -> 1.2% for your little unicorn. That lets the other major party candidate win, in this case Bush. And great job ignoring EVERY structural issue against Democrats. You are just not an honest person. It's really quite disgusting.
Nader is responsible for the loss. He had enough supporters that if had rallied them to use their votes in a way that mattered, Gore would have won. And this isn't high scores on a video game. Nader's choice to siphon votes away from Gore caused millions of people to die. Convincing Bush supporters and other 3rd party freaks why GOP policy is horrible is hard, because they've built their identity around those policies, and casual non-voters aren't paying enough attention to receive any message we try to get out there. But people who are engaged enough to know that we should have a government more liberal than the current Democrats ought to have enough good sense to realize that Republicans will be catastrophic. Ethical people do not put their personal feelings of purity over reducing harm to others. We ALL have a moral obligation to vote, and to vote in a way that makes our preferences more likely to ACTUALLY HAPPEN. There will ALWAYS be things that go wrong in elections, but we all have an obligation to get as many people to vote FOR A MAJOR-PARTY CANDIDATE to help the country as much as possible. In any close election, any number of things could be the last few percentage points that mean a loss or a victory—But Nader was one of those things, and he chose to be on the side of evil. He's responsible for that, and third party voters need to stop being coddled. By all means, we need to change our election laws to change the two-party system, but it is stupid and immoral to vote like we've already achieved election reform.
The war in Iraq wasn't declared, you fucking idiot. There was an authorization of military force, but it's not officially a war. The last war Congress declared was 1942. And AGAIN, you are ignoring the fact that Dems as a whole were more likely to go along with Bush because they shifted rightward after their election loss in 2000. And the AUMF was passed with 215 Republican Aye votes, 6 Nays, while there were 81 Democratic Aye Votes, and 126 Nays. No one is saying Dems are perfect, but they are demonstrably better than Republicans, and with more Dems in power it could have been avoided (and notice how you're COMPLETELY FUCKING IGNORING the way that Bush and his cronies lied about their evidence and manipulated public opinion?! Who is president fucking matters).
I applaud your patience, but they wont be convinced. Their anti-establishmentarianism is key to their identity. Its a dogma now. Its like right wingers voting against liberals against their better interest or sometimes against their moral values. They are defined as being against something, and by god they will be against the hell out of it.
Also they always point to Iraq, and yet distort the truth about it.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/sanders-opposition-iraq-war-was-more-complicated-he-presents-n1137541
Both Bernie and Biden had similar views of Iraq. They weren't against military intervention. They were both against unilateral power towards Bush, but not out right refusal for war. Over time the story has been twisted to Biden being pro war, and Bernie totally against. Both are not telling the whole truth. Sanders even voted for the Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime change in Iraq part of U.S. official policy. This was a prelude to war. This reminds me of 2016 when Bernie and his camp heavily criticized Hillary's super predators bill, while hoping no one notices that voted on that bill. The purity narrative dictate binary views. Nuance need not apply.
So we have Bernie voting on the first measure which justify a war in Iraq, and Biden voting on the last measure which justified the war. Out of the two which is better? Well clearly Bernie is the lesser of two evils here ;). Maybe I shouldn't have voted for him. Since we are all tired of voting lesser evils here amiright?
In any case, a vote for Nader was not a vote for Bush, any more than it was a vote for another non-Gore candidate like Buchanan.
Yes, it is. Stop pretending that our election system is not subject to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. Stop pretending that our election system is trivial. If we had 600 Nader voters in a room, and showed them the likely result of voting Nader was Bush, then their vote for Nader has a direct consequence of electing Bush. Either they were ignorant of this outcome, which is possible and unfortunate, or they did so anyway out of principle, in which case they're selfish delusional assahts, or they did it in order to move the Overton Window or something, in which case I think I disagree but you have made me think about this.
Please tell me where you think the court should have drawn the line.
1- I own a printer, and I use my own money to print a bunch of fliers, and I use my own labor to paste them around the neighborhood.
2- I pay to use a Kinkos printer, and I pay money to some dude that I met off the street, to print fliers and post them around the neighborhood, using my own money.
3- I pay money to an advertising agency to create a TV ad, and I pay some TV companies to put that ad on TV, using my own money.
4- I hire a consulting agency to figure out the best advertising strategy for my political goals, and I pay my own money to do so under contract.
5- Super PACs.
I fail to see any judicially coherent line that could be drawn. Surely the first is protected speech, and given that I cannot find any sort of line at all that can be drawn on the basis of free speech jurisprudence and the first amendment, therefore #5 must be protected speech too.
In other words, saying something is protected speech, but saying that it doesn't cover the use of printers, tv ads, internet ads, etc., is ridiculous.
I would love for a line to be drawn, but there is no line that can be found by reading the first amendment and associated literature. We need to go beyond the morals and values of the first amendment to draw this line.
Your source:
is nonsense. It misuses technical terms like "assault rifle". It also cherrypicks the data. According to open source data collected by Mother Jones, about half of mass shooters only use handguns, and they also account for about half of the deaths. Other respectable websites that I can find say about the same thing.
It also is the worst "correlation, therefore causation" abstract that I have ever seen. Do you want to really know why mass shootings decreased during that time? It's almost certainly the same reason why all violent crime was reducing during that time around the world: the banning of leaded gasoline approx 20 years prior.
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health/
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-lead-crime-roundup-for-2018/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/07/violent-crime-lead-poisoning-british-export
The paper is also flatly wrong on its face. Banning guns painted pink would not lower the rate of use of guns, and the assault weapons ban did nothing except the logical equivalent of banning pink guns while allowing the same gun if it was painted purple (ignoring magazine capacity limits for the moment, which are a little better than useless, but still not all that useful). There is little to no logical connection between the actual rates of gun violent crime and guns with bayonet mounts, pistol grips, collapsible stocks, short barrels, suppressors and flash hiders, and grenade launchers, and yet that's how the federal assault weapons ban is defined.
You have been duped.
I did very little or nothing to address all possible gun control legislation. I addressed simply this one very specific law.
One, citations please for those papers.
Two, I have never seen a scholarly source, or any source really, from 1787 to approx 1870 that said that the second amendment was not primarily about protecting the inalienable right to own and operate military-grade weapons. Really, I never have. You didn't exactly claim to be possession of such a thing, but if you did have such a thing, I would be really interested in a citation.
Here's a few things for you to think about.
The Federalist Papers clearly say that there should be a law that required everyone to have a gun. A little bit later, they put this idea into law with the second federal militia act of 1792, which required almost every able-bodied white male citizen between the ages of 17 and 45 of the United States to go and obtain (ex purchase) a military-grade gun, ammunition, and a laundry list of military equipment. This was a personal obligation with a hefty personal monetary fine for failure to comply, and we know this from documents from at least one surviving court case. According to a report to the federal congress at about the same time, most of the guns of the militia, aka almost every able-bodied white male citizen between the ages of 17 and 45, were privately possessed and owned by the individual members of the militia. Even today, current federal law defines "the militia of the United States" in basically the same way, except without the "whites only" qualifier.
I have many quotes from the founders that say that gun rights are very very important. I have many quotes from such important founders as James Madison and George Mason which clearly show that they equated the militia with the people, using the terms interchangeably, and that they feared the government disarming the people.
I have quotes from as late as circa 1860, such as the infamous Dred Scott decision, which remarked in dicta that gun rights are one of the rights of citizens, and therefore blacks cannot be citizens because blacks couldn't possibly have gun rights (their logic, not mine). Also during the reconstruction era, that thing right after the American civil war, one of the principle aims of the Freedman Bureau was guaranteeing the gun rights of newly freed blacks, with plenty of quotes from leading politicians of the time about how having guns was critical to resist the oppression of the local whites.
I can also talk about the text of the second amendment, and how "well-regulated" is an anachronism today; it didn't mean what you think it means. According to a plethora of sources, including the Federalist Papers, the general term meant "operating well", and in the specific context of a militia, the Federalist Papers clearly use the term to mean "well trained, equipped, and disciplined in the art of war". The entire second amendment text, translated into today's language, is best rendered as "a national population that is well trained, equipped, and disciplined in the art of war is necessary to resist invasion and tyranny, and therefore the right of every person (adult, citizen, white, male) to own weapons of war shall not be unduly infringed, and the right to (reasonably) carry them in (most) public spaces shall not be unduly infringed."
For citations for all of this and more, check my google doc on this matter:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ak6bx8jyDxIlsLuFHHevw-4RQ7R5vJb15RtTNG5d79w/edit
Tangent: Obviously I think that allowing personal ownership of nukes is a bad idea. I'm not even saying that I want the courts to uphold this extreme version – I'm totes ok with a little bit of "rule 0" from the courts regarding nuclear, chemical, and biological, and regarding high explosives. In my doc, I even open with wishing that we had more gun control legislation, and I lay out forms of gun control legislation that I think would be constitutional that I would like, such as mandatory gun owners training and licensing, similar to drivers licenses.
The Federalist Papers clearly say that there should be a law that required everyone to have a gun. A little bit later, they put this idea into law with the second federal militia act of 1792, which required almost every able-bodied white male citizen between the ages of 17 and 45 of the United States to go and obtain (ex purchase) a military-grade gun, ammunition, and a laundry list of military equipment.
You invoke that as though it were Holy Writ. You North Americans are funny that way.
(1792?! Look at the current date. Things have changed a tad since then)
Stop pretending that our election system is not subject to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.
I said nothing of the sort, and everything you said after this also has nothing to do with it. What do you think its implications are?
Stop pretending that our election system is trivial.
I think our system is undemocratic, not that it's trivial.
Also, I think that some don't want to accept that Dems are responsible for their mistakes, even very obvious ones that should be easy to admit. This is presumably because they think Biden is such a fragile candidate that comments on an obscure blog will hinder his ability to win a presidential race, against a hot mess of an opponent who struggles on a daily basis to say anything coherent.
If that's the case, we probably should be very worried. If it's not, I don't think I get what all the fuss is about.
If we had 600 Nader voters in a room, and showed them the likely result of voting Nader was Bush, then their vote for Nader has a direct consequence of electing Bush.
What made this a likely result? You don't say, but that can be inferred. It's a number of Bush voters (more than 600 of them, in your scenario), whose votes were actually the ones that are directly responsible for electing Bush. I hope it doesn't actually surprise you that voting for Bush is the sort of thing that elects Bush.
But seriously, the logic of that quote is so fucked. The likely result of people voting for Gore was that Bush would be elected. That's because they were outnumbered, so it was just plain likely that Bush would win, given his larger share of voters. That obviously doesn't mean a vote for Gore was a vote for Bush. That can't be how you think it works.
@165: No one's saying Dems aren't responsible for mistakes, but you have a dramatically distorted view of what "mistakes" are, given that you imagine that more Americans agree with you and are secretly yearning for your candidate. They're not. You need to change the culture and convince American voters that your ideas are good, but that won't be helped by voting third party. While we all try to do the difficult work of changing American hearts and minds—which is slow, but possible—we should reduce harm. We should also stop relying on ridiculous fictions like "The DNC" forcing candidates on you. Millions of people are voting for those candidates. They have hearts and minds, and you need to change them, not "punish" "the DNC" because
1) it consistently has the opposite effect from what you think,
2) you're punishing a lot of innocent people with death for not being perfect already (even if many of them actually DID want the outcomes you want all along but are still vulnerable to the cruelties of Republican governance),
3) "The DNC" is not choosing these candidates in some smoky backroom,
4) even though there is maneuvering among insiders as to which candidates they will endorse and who will jump into which races, voters could easily overcome that by voting for the underdog if they actually felt as strongly as you imagine they do,
5) especially vis-a-vis #4, the fact that you don't have the groundswell of support you think you do, running your candidates in the general (a la 2018!) is not the guarantee of victory you imagine it to be, and
6) if you really had the support of independents that you think you do, you could get them to register as Dems and vote for your candidate in the primary, and then other Dems would have to grumble and rally around YOUR choice, but you can't do that because you haven't done the work to make your ideas more popular.
@166: holy shit you're an idiot. No, because Bush and Gore were the two most popular candidates, votes for them actually mattered (and for the record, Bush did NOT have a larger share of voters, in Florida or nationwide… FYI). A neutral voter adding their vote to the Gore pile would increase Gore's votes IN RELATION TO BUSH, and therefore make Gore more likely to win, because that is all that matters in First Past The Post voting. Your inability to grasp this very simple concept is probably why you're so blissfully impervious to the harms of non-voting and third-party voting… but Jesus Christ on a Desecrated Cracker, that was a stupid thing you just said. A third-party voter is, by definition, not putting their votes to one of the two parties that is closest to winning—hence why all parties not in the top two are "third parties" and no one cares whether they are actually third, fourth, fifth, or sixth.
Now, First Past The Post is literally the stupidest possible way to run a democracy, and it's kind of amazing that we all still do it. But we should change that, not make excuses for people who react to its frustrations by enabling the worst possible people and kneecapping our ability to make both immediate and systemic change.
@163: Gerrard, I appreciate that you feel strongly about these issues and I do respect the effort that went into your arguments and your citations, and while I passionately disagree, I just don't think I have the stamina to add another long-form debate on this thread. Sorry. I just can't right now.
Earlier, I thought you attempted to defend that effective abstention by saying it would produce better results in the long term by suffering worse results in the short term. Ergo, these "protest voters" are choosing the option with the worse short-term outcome, in the hopes and expectations of a better long-term outcome.
There's plenty of blame to go around. However, some significant portion of the blame, IMHO, must be placed on those who voted Nader who would have otherwise voted Gore because I still slightly believe that their protest voting didn't change the Democratic party substantially. However, I do admit that I still cannot dismiss this argument out of hand. Moreover, it still makes me sick at as a gut reaction to hear someone say, approx "I will choose the option that has a very very bad short term outcome, electing Trump, on the hope and weakly justified expectation that things will be better later by this choice". It still seems irresponsible to me IMHO.