Your “America” is fed up with alt-left terrorism. The other America is fed up with fascist anti-intellectual right wing terrorism.
Biden may lose because the left underestimates how many ignorant conservative casual racists there are (no offence) and how much political correctness and cancel culture turns off moderate voters.
I see this when I go to visit my inlaws out in the country. In a sense, it doesn’t matter what Democrats or Republicans do. They view Democrats as lawless anarchists, Marxists, and immigrants and Republicans are hard working good Christian Americans. They overlook or excuse anything Trump does and think everything Democrats do is part of some secret leftest agenda.
Yes, one of the things progressives have a hard time accepting is that to get Trump out of office and McConnell made Minority Leader, we have to face the reality that the electorate isn’t that different from the one in 2016 that gave the GOP control of everything (yes, through a very unfortunate structural advantage that gives them disproportionate power even when they get fewer votes than Democrats, but this is the hand we’re dealt). A lot of the people who switched over and voted Democratic in 2018 are, as you say, people who may be “casually racist” and are turned off by cancel culture. Even if you hate those things about them, you have to grit your teeth and let Democratic politicians curry favor with such people, or you’re going to be pure…and powerless. We have to play the game, and play it smartly!
I was going to say much the same as QuickSilver did. Reply, I guess you didn’t like the DNC virtual convention?
You really need to join the Democratic strategy team, because it appears that anything that makes you personally uncomfortable is also something that coincidentally will cause Trump to win the election.
We need to make sure that you are pampered and catered to, to ensure that this doesn’t happen, no matter the cost.
I don’t bother watching those. Empty words and hollow marketing. It’s my belief that the Democrats are setting the stage to recreate the exact same circumstances that led to Trump in the first place, and the next time the GOP will be that much bolder. Rage on the streets is the only force that has ever meaningfully changed this country. Civility is just an elitist dog whistle to shut the fuck up and get back to work. More and more people refuse to do so, divided in their ideology but united in their discontent.
Every time I see one of these posts blaming angry people for potentially losing the Democrats an election, I feel less and less inclined to support Biden. It’s like you think you’re somehow better than those rioters on the streets because you’re able to possess an air of civility. Good on ya for being a perfect gentleman while the country dies.
All the center wants is stability and comfort. It has never cared about the people at the margins, either the poor blacks or the white working class, the socialist zealots or the religious zealots. Of course they are attacked from both sides. Why would either support them?
At least the alt right is fed up too. The center just wants to go on believing nothing is wrong, that the system fundamentally works but could use some minor tweaks. No. It’s rotten to the core.
I’m not supporting Biden for the benefit of the center, I’m doing it for the benefit of the people on the margins. The people who are likely to suffer and even die due to the monstrous policies and practices of Trump. They don’t have the luxury of waiting for a better candidate - they need a change in policies now.
No it didn’t. An unpopular candidate and mistaken strategy, plus a significant racist or racist tolerant population, led to Trump.
It’s probably nice to be comfortable enough that you can survive Trump’s monstrous policies, but there are lots of people who might not be able to, and my vote is because of them.
More like decades of failed incrementalism while the GOP lurched hard right. They were busy cultivating their base and playing electoral games while Obama gave pretty speeches and bailed out bankers, smug in their moral superiority. Clinton was a symptom, not a cause, of the cancer. Biden is essentially Clinton but with a dick and a nicer smile. “Let’s try the same strategy again, but with a different face.”
I opposed him in the primary (I supported Bernie), but he won because he got the support of a lot more Democratic voters than anyone else. And I’m still with Bernie - he supports Biden, and his most progressive ever platform, because there are Americans who won’t survive another Trump term. You should consider those Americans when you vote.
I’ve never been as afraid for my life as under Trump. The only thing that scares me more is that the country will choose to pretend like Trump is the sole source of all this, that replacing him with another nicer old white guy will make the problems go away.
You know what, I’ll grant you this: Biden will be less lethal in the short term.
But then answer me this: What changes in 4-8 years? What happens to those failed policy attempts of Clinton and Obama? To the 30% or so of Americans who would never find themselves aligning with Democrats? To the Russian and Chinese operatives who now realize just how vulnerable and divided America actually is? What do we do when the next Trump comes because Biden merely paused the horrors, unable to extinguish them?
Hopefully what changes is that we get enough of a blue wave to implement real reforms across the board, in education, social services, policing and everything else.
What also changes is the Republican party, where they find that catering to the evangelicals and racists is no longer a winning strategy, and they instead try to pick up some of us moderate democrats who are not entirely comfortable with some of the progressive proposals, but would rather support them than the Republicans.
Either the Democratic party splits to fill the vacuum left by an imploded Republican party, or the Republican party tacks hard to the left to attract those of us in the middle.
At the absolute worst, well, as you said, we get a pause in the horrors, and that’s better than a continuation of the horrors.
Vote for the candidate most like Bernie at every opportunity. That’s what we should do going forward. In every primary, and every general election, local, state, and federal.
It’s absolutely a winning strategy. They own the Executive, Judiciary, Senate, most of American geography / electoral districts, 30% of public mindshare, an alliance with the Kremlin… what makes you think in any way they are struggling? It’s always far easier to destroy a democracy in favor of a small WASPy in-group than to try to build a big tent like the Democrats.
That’s one of my enduring gripes about the Democrats: they keep futilely trying to build consensus with the center-left, center-right, and even hard-right sometimes, while the GOP goes for scorched earth. This doesn’t make the Democrats strategically smart, just weak and ineffective.
What makes you think this is a failing strategy for the GOP? Trump’s approval rating has not meaningfully changed during his tenure, especially among the GOP. They’re not going to cater to you in the middle. They’re gonna steamroll you.
A temporary lull isn’t necessarily a good thing. The longer we wait as a country to actually tackle these issues, the worse climate change gets, the more powerful China gets, the more powerful Big Tech gets, the worse gerrymandering gets, the worse voter suppression and manipulation gets, the worse inequality gets, the more armed the right will be, the more refugees will flood the world stage and create more racists…
If a Trump reelection leads to disaster in 2 years and a Biden one leads to a disaster in 8, the one in 8 will likely be far, far harsher.
This discounts the extreme levels of American racial, class, religious, and cultural heterogeneity. Republicans fundamentally do not see brown and black people as worthy humans and do not want to spend shared resources on them. From the left, secular science-based government is fundamentally at odds with fundamentalist American Christianity. Short of secession, what hope for unity is there?
We would have been a lot better off with my fellow Minnesota DFLer Hubert H. Humphrey!