The Democratic Party is the only party that has done anything good on those issues. If you were so meaningfully concerned then set your sights lower than the presidency and start getting your candidates elected to local offices. All politics is local however a group of people exist for whom politics is just about bitching during a presidential election year about both parties being bad but spend the interim period of governing not doing a thing to improve a party. It’s the easiest thing in the world to spout anger and apathy. It’s hard to get progress made.
The way I see it is the party system is like choosing a vehicle. The Democratic Party is the vehicle which I believe is most likely and adequate to get me from a starting point to an end point while having to navigate bumps in between. The Republican Party has a different end point I don’t want to go. And the third party options is a bike that just doesn’t have the capability to achieve anything meaningful.
I remember college kids my age getting real excited about voting for John Anderson in 1980. President Jimmy Carter was too conservative for them. Ted Kennedy should have got the nomination they said. The end result was Reagan.
For the record, I was also a big fan of Pete and I think dale is absolutely correct that he “is the future of the Democratic Party”, in the sense that the only thing that is going to rescue that party are leaders with the kind of confidence, charisma, and authoritative demeanor that Pete has - and that these things are more important than political experience or policies in generating public support.
This is the most naked politics-as-entertainment/aesthetics sad jockeying imaginable. Find things to do with your time that don’t involve forging parasocial relationships with television characters.
The number of people here who are openly expressing a total absence of any meaningful values or principles is so deeply sad.
Someone’s excusing rapist Kavanaugh like two posts up.
Truly pathetic.
This country of TV-rotted senescent solipsists can’t come to an end quickly enough.
Sure, I’ll buy that Buttigieg is the future of the Democratic party. But he’s sure not the present.
Let him win a race for governor, or senator. Or heck, at least the House. Sure, it’ll be hard, but he’s got plenty of time to do it. Get some years of real experience under his belt, and then maybe he can be a real contender for President.
I know I have read this incorrectly because it comes across as terribly results oriented, and that is not consistent with your posting history.
However, it seems that on one hand you say that it is good that women are taken seriously, but in the very next sentence you are glad that the timing was right on it so that it can be swept under the rug and “blow over” thereby letting another powerful rich white man off the hook.
And again, you were outraged, outraged, that a person like Brett Kavanaugh could get on the Supreme Court with these types of allegations against him. Why are you not demanding that Biden step down or that the DNC take action at the convention?
For what it’s worth, I’m a Democrat and I thought the Kavanaugh hearings were an asinine waste of political capital. (I feel the same way about the impeachment.) I realize I’m probably in the minority of Democrats for being of the opinion that 1. you shouldn’t set yourself up for failure by picking battles that you can’t win, and 2. eleventh-hour hail-marys based on totally unprovable evidence have bad optics. But I’m not in the “woke” camp, after all.
The “L” you appended to your username might be unnecessary if you think that it’s ENORMOUS SCARE QUOTES “woke” not to want rapist fratboys in lifetime judicial appointments on a sham court.
It’s very appropriate for the willful loser Democratic Party, though.
Corona times have me revisiting old haunts and the extent to which this place is Boomer-brained and dead-ended is truly galling. The thrust of things here is so detached from every other space I visit online.
I can’t tell how much of this is a byproduct of the exodus of some of the brain-drain from the board to splinter boards, twitter, off-line entirely, the grave, etc. and how much of it is the enabling of a broader spectrum of online voices (when I lurked the SDMB heavily the web was Very Very White).
The reflexive Older White Male perspective that is the house style here is super gross and inherently alienating and those of you who might not be aware of it (wonder who this might be) should really get with the program and try a hell of a lot harder.
Delegates are the ones who choose the nominee. Also Biden has won more votes.
Realistically, unless the power brokers pick someone else, we are stuck with Biden. Whose sexual allegations, naivety, ties to the Iraq war, bankruptcy bill, etc. are going to cause issues.
Also the only reason Biden is even the nominee with the most votes and delegates is due to democratic power brokers. They worked behind the scenes to get Buttigieg and Klobuchar to drop out right before super Tuesday and put their support behind Biden.
The idea that the democratic voters can do something about this, I mean what do you think they’re supposed to do? The issue isn’t that ‘all’ democrats will dislike Biden, the fear is that enough democrats will stay home due to the sexual assault allegations, his naivety, Iraq war, possible mental health issues, etc that Trump wins.
So when an institutional challenge is placed in front of you you immediately throw up your hands and submit?
I mean, that’s kind of been the Democratic Party’s whole “thing” since I’ve been alive (when they weren’t betraying labor and ramping up mass incarceration and surveillance) but that you can’t even begin to imagine a scenario in which this empty senile rapist is not the nominee is beyond dire.
“Committed” Democrats (whoever that even is) have no one to blame but themselves for this power consolidation, careerist dealing, and media manipulation.
I didn’t say I was glad about anything. Sometimes I speak about my own beliefs and preferences, sometimes about my estimation of political strategy, impacts, etc.
If you look at my posting history, you’ll find that I’ve advocated for Biden to drop out for months. I’d be ecstatic if he dropped out tomorrow. You’ll find that I’ve advocated that this allegation be taken seriously and investigated, as it has and continues to be, based on the updates to the story that continue to be released. You’ll find that I’ve responded to this pretty much exactly the same as I did to the first allegation against Kavanaugh – advocating for taking it seriously and that it be fully investigated.
If you look at my posting history, which apparently you did not.
I assume that you’re referring to me. Not everyone can be a paragon of virtue like you, sorry. No, Kavanaugh should never have been placed on the court, that much is true. He is pet of plutocrats and the only world he has ever known or cared about is the vile hive of obscenely rich WASPs he rose from. His beliefs and values will directly hurt me, you & millions of people, which is what Democrats should have led with. Instead they turned Congress into a reality show about a sexual assualt that happened a lifetime ago. I don’t care about a frat party that happened before I was born. No jury in the country would’ve convicted Kavanaugh on the basis of evidence we saw in that political circus, and the backlash directly led to the Dems LOSING Senate seats in what was supposed to be a blue wave midterm. That’s the problem- the whole thing was tactically stupid- which is the greatest failing of the current iteration of the party, not that they’re not woke enough, as you seem to think. Here are some more monumentaly stupid tactical moves out of their recent playbook:
-Failing to give DC & Puerto Rico statehood when they controlled the White House, the House, and had a supermajority in the Senate. This was completely doable and activists and pundits clamored for it at the time, to death ears. This alone could’ve stopped the true root of evil, Mitch McConnell, from ever gaining power.
-Passing Romneycare after Obama campaigned on passing true universal healthcare, because of fears of upsetting Republicans with the horrors of a public option. Instead, democratic turnout cratered in the following midterm, while republican turnout remained mostly static, leading to hundreds of dems losing their elections nationwide during a redistricting year.
-Running one of the most disliked politicians in the country in 2016 after the GOP & its propaganda machine spent almost 30 years digging a Hillary Clinton shaped hole and praying for the chance to finally fill it.
-Learning all the wrong lessons from the Trump & Bernie phenomenons, and doubling down on identity politics and mealy mouthed centrism instead of economic populism and strengthening unions and organizing. This even partially applies to Bernie himself, who filled his 2nd campaign with graduates from Woke University, losing almost half his support in the process.
-The impeachment circus, which accomplished nothing except raising Trump’s approval ratings, and gifting him & his cult a dangerous new feeling of invincibility.
-Running the oldest candidate in US history during a pandemic that disproportionately kills off geriatrics, and one who has shockingly low support among young voters at a time when the party needs to nurture a new generation of leaders and gain support from a new generation of voters. The leaders of the party are now Biden, Pelosi & Schumer. Good luck getting anyone under 60 to be excited about that.
-And now this Tara Reade thing. The Dems have trained a certain portion of their voters to parrot #MeToo talking points and to believe all women, so now they have to deal with the repercussions of their candidate being hit by his own unprovable, inconvenient sexual assault allegations.
There is no world that exists where it matters if he did this or not. All that matters is what is done about the cratering economy, our healthcare system, climate change… things that affect hundreds of millions of Americans, not just Tara Reade and a few concerned feminists. Of course, Biden will do next to nothing about all that, so it’s a moot point anyway. Now was the time to run a charismatic young leader in sharp contrast to Trump- one that could inspire a new generation of voters to save this country. Too bad.