It would be great if you comment on where you stand politically. In places like Buffalo, the resistance to India Walton, who won against Byron Brown who want’s to stay on the ticket, and the resistance against Nina Turner… I guess I’m wondering where I stand. I loved Bernie, but I think he went a little far with his wish list. However Biden, hasn’t done much for us yet. I understand he’s up against republicans and more conservative democrats, but I think he could fight harder. Maybe I’m wrong, but this isn’t ‘business as usual’ and he seems to give a crap about what the idiots on the right want.
I’m at the extreme far left of American politics, which means I’m not a Democrat, but I’ve never voted for a Republican and it would take a realignment as big as there’s ever been to get me to do so.
I think that Biden could fight harder, but I didn’t expect him to. Joe Biden is absolutely the apotheosis of what the Democratic party really is, to me. I think that center-right politics which are loosely defined by a Democratic agenda, and then watered down by compromise that shares the blame and limits the scope of reasonable expectations, is effectively the modern Democratic agenda in national politics. It is immensely frustrating to me that a lot of people who are actually quite progressive in their personal policy preferences are willing to accept this as a governance strategy, but, you know, I’m aware it’s the case.
I think Bernie’s wish list is fine and reasonable. I get frustrated when people talk about “electability” as if that question is something that is resolved ahead of time, and not by actually contesting ideas in an election.
We did settle the question of his electability. He lost the primaries, he isn’t electable because he wasn’t elected.
For my own politics, I’m very far left, but I think it’s pretty clear that America is collapsing and that what’s most important is that we don’t let the fascists get control of the white house again. This is all that matters.
I voted for Bernie in the primary. Biden has been a lot better than I expected in several areas.
The squad is definitely further left than me. I’d love if the country was run by people like Russ Feingold but ultimately the new breed is having a much bigger impact with their messages and tactics and the best shot we have of more progressive policies are with more people like them. acting as a pressure group on the establishment.
The one thing where the Democrats are really in danger of a complete own goal is if they decide the filibuster is more important than voting rights and that is an area where it sure looks like a lot of them think this is “business as usual” when it is very much not.
There are a LOT of people out there who are somewhere slightly right of Biden, but not quite modern-day GOP. People who liked Obama and Clinton, and think Biden’s a bit much, but still this side of alright.
The problem is that a lot of them voted Biden this time around because Trump was so personally repellent, not because they’re endorsing any kind of progressive agenda or anything like that. The big question is whether they’ll vote Republican in 2022 and 2024. If the Republicans run someone less insane than Trump- say a center-right politician of some kind, a-la one of the Bushes, they’ll probably run away with that crowd, vs Biden.
Establishment Democrats are where it’s at, if you ask me. Going further left with the Squad and Bernie would be a hideous misreading of where a lot of people are, and would push a lot of people toward any non-insane Tea Party/Trumpist Republican candidate.
The only thing going for that is that some significant portion are going to figure that even as odious as all that far-left nonsense is, it’s still preferable to the even more odious hate, racism and cruelty of the modern-day GOP.
When I say Bernie’s wish list was big, I mean I think it scared the shit out of some people. If their were things he could get done, then I would have wanted him to try. I think individual progressive ideas poll well, but people are fearful of Democratic Socialism now, and associate it with terribleness. If people could just see what it could be like…
I always chuckle a bit at the framing of this divide as between Progressives and “Establishment” Democrats. Bernie Sanders has been in Congress for 30 years. AOC sits through the boring hearings and helps constituents get their passports expedited just like any other House member. By any reasonable standard, these ARE members of the Democratic establishment. And Sanders and AOC in particular have shown that they’re willing to play ball with the (relatively) more centrist Biden Administration.
I just think it’s important to maintain perspectives that while there are differences among Democrats, they pale in comparison to the differences between a party that has some policy disagreements and one that has betrayed everything it ever stood for to embrace authoritarianism and white nationalism.
I actually thought Biden was pushing further left than I expected.
I have no problem saying that Bernie lacked electability because he lost in the primary. For him to win, he would have needed to tap into enough people on the left to override the middle. Biden followed the traditional path of being more moderate–which is exactly why his agenda was surprising.
The faltering I see is that no attempt to was made to use the Democratic majority in the Senate to reform the filibuster. I don’t mean removing it entirely, necessarily. But they should have done something to get through at the very least the voting rights bill, just to keep the Republicans from putting their thumbs on the scale.
People need to see the Democrats getting things done.
Well, first, that’s not how primaries work, and I don’t believe that you think they do work that way, so it’s hard to know how to respond to that. I am going to assume you don’t believe that no one else involved in the campaign on either side is capable of winning an election. Presumably you believe there will be another president after Biden, but that person wasn’t elected in 2020 either.
And I wasn’t talking about Bernie Sanders the individual human candidate, I was talking about his policies. Your response is part of the question-begging that I’m talking about. People support right-leaning candidates because they believe that right-leaning policies are more “electable.” And then that turns out to be true, because the people who themselves believe in left-wing politics (like, for example, you say you do), who are part of the coalition that could elect a candidate whose politics matched their own, don’t actually vote their interests on the grounds of electability. Then people say the election answered the question, even though nobody ever asked it.
But this ground has all been trodden to nothing by this point. I was just answering the OP’s question.
I honestly don’t understand what point you think you’re making. Sanders not being able to actually win the nomination is a pretty good indication that he is not electable, by you know not getting elected, even at the primary stage, let alone the general. I never said I supported Sanders’ policies which I think are aimed at white suburbanites who are more upset with their lost white privilege, than any systemic injustice. I think that Sanders ignored systemic racism, which is the foundational problem in the US from which all the rest follows. I see Sanders as white savior as problematic and reactionary as Trump. I think that Sanders supporters consistent dismissal of the concerns and preferences of black democratic primary voters demonstrates how deeply racist the movement is. I think that America needs to get past Trump AND Sanders. I won’t respond more here to avoid a further hikack.
@Jimmy_Chitwood I already posted why his losing the primary suggested he could not win the general election, but I can elaborate.
The way the general wisdom goes is that the people in the middle are the ones who decide the election. Your dedicated Democrats won’t vote Republican, and vice versa. Thus it makes more sense to appeal to the center, which is what Biden did.
The strategy that Sanders and other progressives were going for was different. It was to (1) convince progressives who had not been voting or who voted third party to instead vote Democratic, and (2) to just energize more left wing posters. The idea is that these combined numbers could override those in the middle who they would lose.
However, the fact that they could not win the primaries showed that those extra votes were not there. They weren’t willing to vote for them. And the results of the general (both in 2016 and 2020) was close enough that we barely had enough, so the people who would have voted against any progressive would have mattered.
So it does not seem that, in the years that Sanders ran, he was electable. His policies or the progressive policies weren’t electable.
Do I think this will be the case forever? For the former, maybe. For the latter? Not if we play our cards right, and show people that progressive and “socialist” are not such dirty words, and that they just support ideas they would be fine with.
Of course, we also need to make sure the system isn’t rigged against us, too. And we need Democrats who will actually try to appeal to the people more directly with their policies. Why has there not been a massive campaign for the voting rights bill? Why has there not been a massive campaign for the filibuster as it currently exists being broken, and needing to be fixed?
I’m a center left Democrat and I think Bernie Sanders is a vile bag of shit.
That said, 2021 hasn’t been a good year for them. McAuliffe easily crushed progressive darling Jennifer Carrol Foy and Eric Adams won NYC mayor as all the progressives shot themselves in the foot.
I have no idea how OH-11 will turn out. I’ve seen no good polls and trying to estimate turnout for a special election primary in the middle of the summer is a fool’s errand. Obviously, I’d like to see Turner crushed, but she definitely has the money and name recognition.
The squad continues to embarrass themselves daily and their two new buddies, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman, have shown they’re more interested in being Twitter trolls than being in Congress.