How about both of you go the fuck home and let an actual progressive do some actual good for once?
That would require getting elected, which would require them being broadly popular.
Barack Obama pulled off a surprise victory over the established Democratic candidates by campaigning on a message of hope and change. Of course his administration ended up only slightly more progressive than a standard Democrat's, but the fact remains that a non-mainstream candidate can run and win on the promise of progressive reform.
I think Biden has been more progressive then Obama. Yeah, Obama was a minority and he was a damn good orator and importantly he wasn't Hillary. He represented progress. But his actual policies? Nah. There is something aspirational about having someone who isn't another old white man, and I think Obama was a decent President, just not particularly progressive.
And the established dem party learned from their mistakes. It will be much tougher to slide a progressive by again.
More specifically, progressives would have to actually turn the fuck out for those progressives at the primaries.
Bernie can tell you counting on that is counting on pigs flying.
The issue is they'd rather have another republican than an actual progressive
See: Al Gore vs Bush
Also, still miffed about Bernie not being a “good candidate” for the DNC in 2016.
Gore won. He just fucked up by playing by the rules back when people thought that mattered. The brooks brother rioters knew better, and the right wing court put the fix in.
Also, not to be a pill, but nader took a small percentage of the votes in Florida in that election as a progressive. Most of those probally would have gone to Gore, making the bullshit soft coup the GOP pulled off impossible if he wasn't in the race.
First past the post means vote for the lesser evil and pressure the fuck out of them to get the system changed. Thats it. The system doesn't let anything else work.
Nader didn't just take a small percentage, he deliberately targeted swing states to sabotage Gore for stepping on the Green Party's turf by running on climate issues.
Literally the green party exists today because they refused to let the usual process 3rd parties swear is the actual reason they exist play out, and let the major party that is closest to them adopt their policies.
And you can see that "fuck you this is my shit!" mentality to a certain degree among modern NoVote "progressives", it isn't enough if Biden literally delivers on everything Bernie said he would and more, because he's "the DNC" and he's not Bernie so it's obviously not good enough and you should still refuse to vote for him.
Doesn’t fucking matter, I’m voting D because it’s a fucking binary system and the other choice is a dystopian totalitarian shithole and abstaining from voting is voting for said shithole.
it’s a fucking binary system
That can change but it requires people to get involved at ground level politics like school boards, city councils, county supervisors and township offices. It takes about ten years for these officials to reach congressional levels. The teabaggers did this successfully but they had a lot of financial support from wealthy conservatives.
How about no President over the age of 60? I want young politicians. I also want term limits.
Please no. An age cap is fine. But term limits will just add gas to the fire of corruption.
This is something you can actually observe too. Districts that have implemented term limits have seen corruption go up, not down.
What exactly would term limits accomplish? Bernie Sanders would be prevented from running, but people like Kyrsten Sinema would be fine.
The solution to bad candidates is to vote them out in the primary or work towards ranked choice voting so that people have a legitimate 3rd option in the general.
Not surprising, this is pretty much why he ran 4 years ago. He never wanted to be president, but his party had literally nobody (whom they would allow) that could step up and be a real contender.
That "allow" part being a rather substantial issue for those not really paying attention back in 2016.
I'm not sure you can say he never wanted to be president. He ran in 1988 and 2008 before running in 2020. It sounds more like he always wanted to be president, but I could believe he'd prefer to not feel like he has to run for another term.
Not helpful.
This is why we have no honesty in politics.
For fucks sake. He's trying to do everything he can to alert the country their democracy is in grave danger to the point of admitting he wouldn't still be there if he didn't think he had the best chance of stopping Trump.
And at the sidelines we have endless hand-wringing about his age and calls for a better candidate.
THEY ARENT STEPPING UP BECAUSE THEY AGREE BIDEN HAS THE BEST CHANCE.
Everyone complains the Democrats suck at messaging and then bitch about everything they say and do, even when it's honest, straightforward, and easy to understand.
THEY ARENT STEPPING UP BECAUSE THEY AGREE BIDEN HAS THE BEST CHANCE.
This is not at all the only conclusion one would draw from an incumbent president not drawing challengers. Incumbent challenges usually cause division and a divided party may be in a worse place than a party unifying around a bad candidate. If Biden decides to run, we're pretty much stuck with him.
Or, they could actually do more for the people.
Yeah because the NoVote crowd sure made that easy to accomplish letting the GOP back into the house.
I liked it. Makes it seem like he isn't disconnected from the world, he knows what we want.
Ohhhhh so ONLY Joe can beat Trump! That’s why he’s doing it everyone, no one else has any chance!
This makes zero fucking sense outside of the incumbents advantage. The biggest talking points around the country to get ’moderates’ and ‘undecideds’ to vote for Trump, vote third party, or abstain from voting are almost completely centered on him personally and to a lesser extent the DNC. It also ignores the many 2020 voters who were “I can’t believe they’re going to make me vote for Joe Biden”, people which anecdotally is everyone I know irl that voted for him.
If he had stepped aside and let another primary happen not only do we lose all that baggage(a good portion of which I will freely admit is horsehit and the remainder mostly also apply to Trump) and the candidates could use the primary to get the electorate excited about something new and different, which would be a big gain in the fight to stop fascism. I’m gonna vote for you again Joe, but this is a foolish take imo
Historically incumbents have a huge advantage. It would be foolish to throw that away.
We know Biden can beat Trump. We don't know if that's certain for anybody else.
We don’t know it’s certain he can do it again either
Biden didn’t have a four year presidency filled with deep economic issues for the average person last time, we were also in a plague, and had seen insane political activism all year. Inflation wasn’t on everyone’s mind and there weren’t two serious wars going on that we are funding with him as the CMC. He’s not popular or well liked even by his voters
Additionally Trump was and had been obviously more looming and visible to the average voter who really doesn’t pay much attention to politics or even the news for that matter. People were animated to get him out. I don’t think it will happen that way this time. Most folks have short memories and vote with their pocket book.
Again I’ll crawl over glass to for him because there’s only two possibilities and I hope I’m wrong, but it seems like they are playing prevent defense, and prevent defense prevents you from winning. I don’t feel confident in the slightest
And yet, most people don’t want to vote for Biden. He won because people voted against Trump. I’m not convinced it will work again.
I do. I’m an old progressive and he’s been the most progressive president in my lifetime outside of Carter, and honestly he’s probably been more progressive than Carter.
I don’t get the ambivalence about Biden at all from anyone who’s not a hard core Republican.
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