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this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2025
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Gotta start somewhere.
What I don’t like is that it follows the piecemeal approach that centrist liberals do where it is always too little and ineffective for the entire population which makes it mostly invisible.
“Let’s do socialism for 11% of the people while everyone else gets to pay taxes and get nothing”.
“Perfect is the enemy of the good”
Yeah no progress until we can instantly have 100% goal attainment!
Don't forget to not vote next midterms or primaries to show Newsom and the Dems we mean business!
Sorry. I'm not voting for an anti trans bigot, even if they happen to have a D next to their name.
Fortunately, the odds of protest non-voters in California allowing a Republican to win is extremely low.
Who are you gonna vote for?
Look, I'm all for incremental progress, but you don't start from a compromise position and then compromise further like the centrist Democrats have done whenever they've had power. You start with the hardline position (free, universal, single-payer healthcare funded by a progressive tax system) and then compromise from there only if necessary to get something done. Centrists stupidly think that they can get what they want without a fight by proposing something that's already a compromise, but the hardline conservatives are just going to fight anyway and the centrists are forced to negotiate. The result is that the right always gets a favorable outcome and the left feels betrayed.
Often the good is the enemy of the perfect. Obamacare was such a joke that it set the Democrats back a generation. They managed to get something passed, but their clinging to norms and refusal to nuke the filibuster meant that the bill was a pro-corporate mess so convoluted that people didn't even realize they were benefitting from it. It legitimately helped people, but it also so sabotaged the Democratic brand that it set progress back decades in many fields. We got Obamacare, but we traded Roe v Wade for it. Without Obamacare, abortion would still be legal nationwide. People saw what Democrats would do even with a supermajority, and many voters just gave up on politics entirely due to Democratic corruption and timidity.
We lost abortion because Democrats thought it was more important to keep it as a wedge issue to rustle up votes than to enshrine it in law.
That is a saying by centrists for suckers. Nobody is asking for perfect. People want effective leadership.
Seems like the only solution centrists support is stupid sayings to make people accept ineptitude and corruption.
The DNCs ineffective leadership under Obama led to thousands of political positions lost throughout the country. They didn’t even bother locking up Bush and his cronies for their crimes.
Like I said: gotta start somewhere.
My point is that the start is so small that it allows republicans to demonize and ultimately kill it since it doesn’t help the vast majority of people.
You’ve given up before you’ve even began (believe me, I know that feeling).
But don’t let your paralysis leak out to other people. If you see someone taking baby steps to make this world better, you be their cheerleader. You give them your energy so that they can take bigger strides.
And who knows, maybe in the process you’ll have taken your first baby steps too.
I haven’t given up. I’ve seen these baby steps from centrist liberals for the last four decades. They’re stringing us along like donkeys.
Centrist liberals will only do the bare minimum for the working class while fully enabling the capitalists.
Homes, food, insurance, cars, etc are much more expensive than ever and wages are not even close to catching up. Corporate profits are through the roof though.
Tell me how 8 years of Clinton plus 8 years of Obama plus 4 years of Biden improved the life of Americans. That’s 20 years of millions of Americans dying from being denied care and/or going bankrupt because they got sick.
All they did was stabilize the markets for capitalists.
Tell me how the republicans have done any better.
Look we can sit here and back and forth all day long. Yes, our system fucking sucks donkey balls. Will it get better? Who the fuck knows. But I guaran-fucking-tee you that shitting over things like affordable insulin is not the way to go. We gotta take our wins where we can. And when our centrist D’s don’t, we gotta get out there and hold their feet to the fire; whatever that means.
But giving up is not a fucking option, because that’s how we got Trump and friends in the first place. And look at where that’s got us.
We gotta a fucking gestapo in the US. We are at the cusp of a new nazi regime. And NOBODY that matters is freaking out about it.
What. The. Fuck.
So you know what: I’ll take a state 3,000 miles away from me FINALLY doing something right. Even if it’s not perfect. Because right now I need some goddamned good news. Even if it doesn’t affect me personally. Because what else do I have, if not that?
Just give me a goddamned gun otherwise so I can paint my walls in red.
Republicans are way way worse. You’re misunderstanding my complaint.
My complaint only points out that the baby step method that modern centrist liberals (Clinton, Obama, Newsom, Biden) push ends up being controlled opposition by the wealthy.
They all know what the real solutions are. They don’t hesitate to kick in socialism during every crisis that affects wealthy people. They go all the way with those. For anything that can help the public it is always some half-ass job that excludes a lot of people which will only upset a large segment of the population against it.
And speaking of the gestapo.
Do you know what’s going to happen if we ever have another election and a centrist liberal wins? The centrist liberals will say that it is time to move on from division and forgive and forget all offenses and government criminality. Just like Obama did with Bush and Biden did with Trump.
I don’t want to vote for controlled opposition centrist liberals. I want to vote for FDR Democrats.
Edit: as pointed out below, these numbers are for type 1 and 2, so the population is requiring insulin is much lower than this.
https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/php/data-research/index.html
Sure, the majority of folks don't have diabetes, but come on, this affects a huge number of people, and I would bet that a vast, vast majority of people at least know someone with diabetes.
And yes, those are national whereas this is California---but it's also about changing hearts and minds. When someone from Texas, struggling to pay for their kid's insulin, learns about this, they might just question some things.
Not to mention those that know someone who has diabetes.
type 1 is the one that needs insulin the most but they dont make up a large part of compared to type 2.
Good point, edited to add comment.
type 2 needs insulin in some circumstance, if thier insulin resistance too high, or it precedes type 1.
11% is not insignificant. It’s just too small and it leaves most people out. I can already see the “most diabetic people make themselves diabetic” talking points.
The ACA was supposed to be transformative but it ended up being more of a patients’ bill of rights that anything to make care affordable.
Baby steps gave us Trump and their fascists regime. America needs someone with vision like FDR that isn’t afraid of upsetting the wealthy donors.
Sometimes that may be true but neurologically, empathy is often driven by experience and most people have a relative with diabetes and many people have a diabetic relative who struggles financially with it. This would be hard to demonize.
This reads like you're saying diabetics don't deserve cheap insulin in California. This is not too little and is not ineffective for the people living in poverty with diabetes.
I'm getting really tired of defending progress from attacks by progressives.
I’m just tired from the lack of progress. It shouldn’t take decades to fix simple things but centrists love money too much.