Is there one if someone calls you a liar?
Only the money and the schedule and the debate rules and the rumour mill…
Stawman. Not my argument.
…which of course everyone already knew/was as widely advertised/was as publicly endorsed by the party machine…
The Democratic Party absolutely puts its thumb on the scale in the primaries. Obama getting the nom instead of Hillary Clinton was not supposed to happen, and they went HARD to make sure she got her turn in 2016.
I’m hoping the proposed switch to ranked-choice voting in the primaries gets enacted for 2028, because it’ll make those kind of shenanigans a lot more difficult to pull off.
Sigh. I don’t like the conspiracy crap, either. Are the main people in the Democratic Party largely liberal and not even progressive, let alone leftist? Of course.
But they still want to win elections. They would have gotten behind Sanders if he was pulling in the numbers. When he didn’t against Clinton, and when they were able to overwhelm him with Biden in 2020, it appeared like he couldn’t. They coalesced behind the one they thought could win.
I hate that they aren’t progressive, but the only way to fix that in a two party system is to start from the ground up running progressives. We’ve gotten some elected.
No amount of pessimistic “well, they wouldn’t be allowed to win anyways” can possibly fix the problem. Yes, deal with reality. But then don’t shut down the paths that do exist, just because they are unfairly harder than they should be. If the party is the problem, you have to put in the work to change the party.
At the end of the day, if it actually is hopeless, then at least we tried. You miss all the shots you don’t take. The only way to guarantee failure is not to play.
I’m not the OP. I don’t disparage people for talking about how bad shit is. I don’t begrudge those who are so worn down they can’t fight. I know what is needed is empowerment, not chastisement.
But I am seeing actual fatalism here, rather than simple realism. And I am seeing a lot of y’all going after Nemo when he’s not doing the actual bad shit, and even actually engaging in discussion.
I still blame the thread, ofc. I think this thread should be nuked and things reset. But, if you’re gonna engage with him here, I do think you should be fair. Attack him when he attacks us.
Don’t fucking dehumanize him. Fuck that bullshit. Everything about him in this thread has been very human.
Who said anything about a conspiracy? Conspiracies are organized. This is just the machine running.
Oh, and can’t say I missed the old BigT finger wagging, but there it is, like it never left.
Excellent post.
Maybe not all that relevant to this particular thread, but … still …
I think our “first past the post” voting system is part of the problem. It would be easier to get really popular candidates with a form of preference voting. But i don’t see any chance we’ll fix that in enough places to matter.