It has to or there wont be any hope for it. Being idealistic in some nightmare dystopia isn’t that useful.
“Well we wanted to keep people safer, so we gave up all our rights and freedom and then they decided to enact the Purges. But I wasn’t going to vote for someone who wasn’t for single payer I’ll tell you that much! Now eat your dog meat and we’ll see if we can avoid the kill drones and make it to shelter before it gets too dark.”
I’ve be voting for the inevitable Clinton 2.0 that the DNC decides to anoint next election simply because Trump, but after that, i’m not sure i can continue unless they make at least a token effort to be worth my vote.
The thing you guys forget is that there is always a Trump. There is always a great evil enemy politician that we need to set aside reform to deal with. There is always an external enemy, a danger, or some reason that the establishment can come up with to counter the desire for reform. It just so happens that this one time, i agree with them. HOWEVER i guarantee you that even if Kasich or McCaine run for president in 2020, the DNC establishment will use the same argument how it is not time to think about reform.
The problem is that the only capital you have is your vote. If the democrats know you will vote for them no matter what they do, you have zero say and they can do whatever they want, including purging progressives and bringing people like Donna Brazile back in to the fold, a huge slap in the face to progressives.
To the people talking about purity tests, would you feel the same if it was something you care about? What if there was a democratic candidate that was anti abortion? Pro KKK? Etc etc. It is just one issue, right? The reverse is never mentioned though. It is never an argument that people like Bernie Sanders support most of the same policies, so we should all vote for him and not have a purity test.
Even if you hate progressives, think about how smart this strategy is. If you believe that progressives not turning out because they were upset with the last election was the reason Clinton lost, you must be REALLY mad that the DNC is on track to do the exact same thing next time. I guess they hired the same consultants that screwed up Clinton’s campaign.
I’m not asking for the moon, just the party at least trying to appeal to the left and most importantly, not being actively hostile to it. They were almost to the level of being civil, but they just couldn’t help themselves.
I don’t think a Clinton-type’s win is inevitable. Trump has made the left angry enough they might go Tea Party as well. Will be bad for governing, but I could see an insurgent really pulling a Trump on the left, esp if other actors pull a Russia.
Their main goal will be making conservatives upset and triggering them.
I’d think that non idiot progressives would actually vote this time, now that their failure to do so in 2016 has resulted in massive damage to everything they believe in.
But hey, maybe all progressives are just fucking retarded.
Of course the political analogy to Germany is very clear. During Hindenburg’s term, lots of people chose not to vote for the mostly ineffective and congenially corrupt social democrats who gave Hindenburg his presidential majority. This resulted in Hitler’s political victory when his party gained a plurality in parliament and Hindenburg had to appoint him Chancellor.
So yeah, sure, stay home, don’t vote, or vote Green or whatever. I’m sure it will be fine.
I’d like to think that too, but this bat shit crazy ass thread proves otherwise.
We are so fucked.
I know a guy who always votes libertarian.
He also believes vaccines cause autism, GMO’s cause cancer and that 9/11 was an inside job. So I’m good with him voting that way forever.
Biting my tongue dot gif
The (well, a) problem with your thesis is that you for some reason seem to believe the DNC is some all powerful body that dictates who the presidential candidate is going to be; during the primaries a progressive candidate did exist, but the primaries also saw very low turnout. Did the DNC force those people not to vote? Sanders had huge rallies, but when it came time to show up at the ballot box - they didn’t. Further, African Americans, specifically African American women are a core constituency of the Democratic party and they do turn out. They voted for Clinton. I don’t get this DNC IS TAKING OUR VOTES or that they somehow are dictating everything. They are not.
There’s also more to politics than voting for the President. Where are progressives in the off years, the local elections? Punishing Democrats because they didn’t go far enough with ACA turned out swell since 2010 unleashed gerrymander hell - which is in no small part a reason we’re here now.
(totally tangential and just because it irks me but the next time someone like @Alstein writes how corrupt HRC is/was, prove it. And no, getting paid for speeches on Wall Street is insufficient evidence that she’s the most corrupt politician ever.)
For the record I’m far left, to the left of Sanders even. But I don’t have a problem voting for Democrats (like, what other choice is there? lol.) #notallprogressives.
This assumes that most progressives didn’t vote for Clinton.
Ron Howard voice: they did
The fact is, whether Hillary was corrupt or not didn’t matter as much as whether Americans believed she was corrupt or not. They believed she was corrupt as hell, and because of that, folks tended to read what they least wanted to hear into what she said. The standard isn’t proving she’s corrupt, it’s simply believing it.
This, more than any other reason, is why she lost an election that was as much of a slam-dunk as 2008 was. Once your credibility is gone, it’s gone, and hers was gone outside of her base.
Bernie had some real problems as well- the black church community didn’t know squat about him. One of Bernie’s weaknesses was that he had never run before, so he wasn’t known much outside of Vermont and diehard fans of socialism. That’s why he lost. He just had too big of a hole to overcome. It was like the Vermont football team going to Arkansas for a football game.
One of my former commanders briefed Hillary for a year when she was SecState- while he didn’t vote for her (he voted 3rd party like he usually does), he was very complementary of Hillary. I did vote for her, I didn’t care if she was a crook or not- I knew Trump was the bigger crook. I understand that in general election, the idea is to vote against the worst candidate, the primary is where you vote for the best candidate.
I agree with you on the African American thing- I saw it myself. That constituency was very loyal to Bill Clinton, so they voted for Hillary. Bernie’s folks had real enthusiasm, there just weren’t enough of them. That said, the DNC did tilt the scales, which wasn’t right. I don’t think a fair DNC would have switched the result, I’ve been consistent on this.
In the end, a higher percentage of Bernie voters voted for Hillary in 2016, than Hillary voters votied for Obama in 2008, so the whole Bernie or Bust thing stabbing Hillary in the back is not reality-based.
I’m also like you on this- I’m not to the left of Bernie, at least I don’t think I am, but I also sucked it up. Doesn’t mean that I’m not going to criticize the hell out of the Dems for losing a very winnable election. Failing to learn from history means you can repeat it.
It wasn’t Progressives who cost Hillary the election- it was low-information voters who were disillusioned by the current system- and found Hillary so untrustworthy and uninspiring that they bought the snake oil. Talked to folks like that. At least some of them have turned on Trump now.
I think if you held an election today, Hillary would beat Trump.
I think if you held the election today, Satan, the Morningstar, would poll like he was going to beat Trump and then mysteriously decide to drink a gallon of polonium tea and then go swimming in the Hudson.
Which is a scathing indictment of the American electorate and the reason we are all basically fucked.
I think that’s optimistic, and I wish I shared that view. Why would she beat him? Trump’s camp has managed to tighten and isolate his supporters. They don’t believe anything he doesn’t tell them to believe. The group right on the outskirt is barely any better than that.
They don’t believe their lives will improve with Democratic policies and changes, and the GOP hasn’t had a chance to harm the not super rich yet. If we had an election today, we’d get four more years of Trump.
Honestly this insightful comment goes to the heart of anti-identity politics, Bernie support, antiestablishmentism in many liberal voters; you can’t build a stable political party premised on the idea of half of its members and supporters literally voting against their own self interest, forever. Even if the average Republicans actual policies hurt their constituency in practice at least their constituents believe they are putting forward their self interested policies.
That’s the ultimate problem with identity politics as politics rather than as agitation. If you’ve divided the world into victims and oppressors and expect out of moral duty the oppressors to support the victims with policies that negatively affect their own outcome, it might not be surprising the support for this tentpole policy is not as stable as others. Where otoh economics-first advocates at least have the ability to transcend identities and have a larger tent. When your party is divided between people who get to vote in their own self interest forever and people who are compelled by social pressure and moral compulsion to vote for the former forever even if it leads to worse outcomes for themselves, perhaps taking this as a stable state of affairs is premature.
As a white male I was voting in my interest for a candidate who, I hoped, would maintain the social safety net that I may rely upon in the future, wouldn’t go threatening nuclear war with foreign powers, and would actually take steps to ensure the future habitability of the planet on which my daughter will probably be obliged to live.
As a biracial woman, I voted for the group that isn’t catering to the literal Nazis and racist crowd as well as the one that’s not trying to bring is back in time when non-whites and women were treated like garbage and not equal.
As someone doing relatively well after years of fighting to get there and not because I came from a family that gave me a headstart, you look within the Democratic party and you can’t go two feet without someone telling you to fuck off because of the industry you work in, or the goods you buy, or they think you make too much money because they feel they don’t make enough, or hey you’re views on this or that aren’t perfectly aligned with theirs so you’re really not liberal enough.
Hell even when I say I think we can do better and here is where I am willing to give and what i am willing to give up, it is never enough.
Shiva already made the case as well as anyone.
If you are voting on whether to be shot in the head or the arm, you vote for the arm.
You want better choices? Awesome. You work on that every day, in every election.
But when you are in the voting booth, and you have the choice between where you are being shot? You need to vote for being shot in the arm.
You want better choices? Awesome. You work on that every day, in every election.
But when you are in the voting booth, and you have the choice between where you are being shot? You need to vote for being shot in the arm.
And right there, that’s the difference between democracy American style and lots of other places. In Canada, the UK, Germany, France, etc, multiple parties exist, and their representatives will form coalitions after being elected and they will then select a head of state.
In the US, the voters have to form the coalitions themselves and do all that lifting. And it can get ugly and contentious as it happens. But once things are set and it’s election day, within our current system it’s a binary choice between the two coalitions as they currently stand.
Trumpism is just another form of identity politics.
Ultimately, to win over moderates, you have to make them think it’s in their interest to vote for you. This is an area where I think Hillary lost to Trump. HIllary’s message was fundamentally more of the same- when folks didn’t feel the same was good enough. Trump’s message was snake oil, but folks will take snake oil over what they see is a kick in the shins if they’re not well-informed, and moderates are generally not well-informed voters.
The folks who determine elections generally have two priorities: they value order and their own well-being. This is why I think the Republicans are going to pay hard in 2020 if not 2018, I think folks see Trump as the instrument of disorder, and I think it’s going to be pretty easy to convince the folks who don’t follow this stuff too hard that Trump is for the rich and not “them”. You’ll never convince Trump’s base, the best you can do there is try to demoralize them, and that will be hard.