#also i was all in for bernie in the 2016 primaries

[qqueenofhades]

i registered to vote for the first time ( i feel old) now that im an adult but my state has closed primary elections which i was wondering if you have an opinion about. my initial thought was that its bad because i had to register democrat (rather than my states green party which represents my beliefs more) just so i could vote between democrat candidates, which feels like being pressured into supporting the weird pseudo two party system we have. but then i looked it up and apparently a reason for this is so that people from opposing parties wont purposefully mess up the votes just so that their preferred candidates have an easier time winning, and i think that makes sense too. but is that actually the reason theyve closed it or is it just to force us dem/republican?? cause it feels strange

Okay, look. I respect the fact that you're a young person, and I appreciate that you have not only registered to vote, but plan to vote in the primaries, so I don't want to lecture you too much. That said: I am taking you out for coffee, I am sitting you down, I am looking into your eyes, and I am urgently telling you the following:

The Green Party is a scam. It is a scam. It has existed for decades in American politics as an empty shell corporation weaponizing the good intentions of young people like yourself, because all it theoretically stands for "it's good to save the planet maybe." Which is not something that any non-insane person seriously disagrees with, but there is no world in which that cause is actually furthered by registering/voting Green (you mentioned that you did vote for Democrats, which -- good, but listen to me here, youngun, okay?) It ran Jill Stein in 2016 to siphon more votes from HRC, and this election it plans to run Cornel West, a pro-Russian tankie who positively equated Bernie and Trump, as another spoiler candidate. It does not stand for "protecting the planet" or America in any real way. It has never elected a single senator or congressman, let alone a president. It stands for empty performance/grievance political theater by those people who feel too morally superior to vote for/affiliate with Democrats, often because the internet has told them that it's not Cool or Hip or Progressive enough.

If your main priority is climate/the environment, you're doing the right thing by registering as a Democrat and voting for Democrats. (Also: the adjectival form is Democratic. It is the Democratic party and Democratic candidates, otherwise you sound like the Fox News host who wrote a book literally entitled "The Democrat Party Hates America.") They are the only major party who has in fact passed major climate legislation and have made environmental justice a central tenet of their platform. As opposed to the Republicans, whose Project 2025, along with the rest of its nightmare fascist prescriptions, openly pledges to completely wreck existing climate protections and forbid any new ones, just because we weren't all dying fast enough under their death-cult rule already. That's the main logical fallacy I don't get among both the Online Leftists and the American electorate in general: "the Democrats aren't doing quite enough as I'd like, so I'll enable the active wrecking ball insane lunatics to get in power and ruin even the progress we HAVE managed to make!" Like. How does that even make sense?

On a federal level, the Greens have contributed nothing whatsoever of tangible value to American or international climate policy/legislation, environmental justice, or anything else, because as noted, they don't have any elected candidates and mostly focus on drawing voters away from Democrats. There might be plenty of good candidates on the local or city level, which -- great! Vote away for Greens if they're available, or the only other option is a Republican! But on the federal/primary level, please understand: once again, they are a scam. There is no point in affiliating yourself with them. You're welcome to register Green and vote Democratic, if that makes you feel better or if you prefer having another label next to your name, but once again, I'm telling you in my position as a salty Tumblr elder that they have done nothing but harm to the causes they claim to care about, because "environment" is such a nebulous priority and has demonstrably been hijacked to stop the American government entity, i.e. the Democrats, that is actually working to improve on it.

As for your question: nobody is "forcing" or "pressuring" you to vote in primaries. By your own admission, you made a conscious choice to register as a Democrat in order to vote for Democratic candidates. If you were just a regular registered voter of whatever party affiliation, you would vote in the general election for whatever candidate the primary process produced. But if you are sufficiently vested and committed to that process that you would like to have a say in who is running under that party label, it is not unreasonable that you would register as a member of that party. Nobody has twisted your arm behind your back and made you do so; you are taking a considerable level of initiative on your own. Likewise, open primaries can be both a good and bad thing. This falls under the "the political system we have is flawed, but we can't magically pretend it doesn't exist and act according to our own fantasyland versions of reality" thing that I keep saying over and over. So yes, if you want a role in shaping the Democratic candidates who emerge from a Democratic primary process, you will usually register as a Democrat, and nobody has forced you to do that. It's that simple.

Likewise as a general programming note: I'm trying to cut back on politics a bit right now, because I don't have the spoons/bandwidth/mental health to deal with it. I apologize. So if you've sent me a politics-related ask recently and haven't received a response, I'm not deliberately or maliciously ignoring you; I just am not able to handle it as much as usual and will have to put it on pause. However, I feel as if this is important enough to be worth saying, so, yeah.

[radiofreederry]

I want to emphasize that while it may seem hard to understand with the benefit of hindsight, there was some logic in appending Sarah Palin to McCain's presidential campaign. McCain was at the time viewed as a fairly moderate Republican (though unquestionably a foreign policy hawk), and Palin allowed him to secure the conservative wing of the party which had been represented by Huckabee in the primary and was not enthused by McCain's candidacy, while also possibly peeling off female voters (particularly PUMAs) who had supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary (and notably, more Hillary voters supported McCain in the general than did Bernie voters support Donald Trump in 2016).

Vance adds nothing. He provides no ideological balance, he is not well-liked in Ohio, he opens no new demographics of Republican support and if anything closes some by being repugnant to female voters, he keeps saying insane shit on TV in addition to the insane shit he's already said that keeps being unearthed every week, he's a vocal supporter of Project 2025 which the campaign is desperately trying to distance themselves from, he has the worst favorability ratings of any Vice Presidential candidate since 1972 and those ratings keep going down over time.

Vance is by all metrics an immensely worse choice than Sarah Palin ever was.

[touchstoneaf]

Look. I know you're angry. Furious, even; that this is what we have to work with, that we're stuck in this position again and again, that our will never seems really to be heard, much less done. And I get it. I was angry (nay, furious), too, in 2016. I was FURIOUS that my excitement for the future was purposefully derailed and my primary vote literally BURNED or 'lost', so that we couldn't get Bernie, the most Progressive and promising candidate ever in US history, to run against Trump; because it seemed he would have been a shoo-in. That I was forced to vote for Hillary instead, because in comparison she seemed so flawed. That I had to go with the 'lesser of two evils' option. That my vote wasn't good enough for the Dems in the primary, got flushed away like it was nothing, only for them to come back and beg me for my vote a couple months later. "If they didn't want my vote in the primary, they can't have it now", I said. I also didn't actually believe that the Orange Menace, Cheeto Voldemort, could actually ever be electable. I knew he was worse than Hillary could ever be... but I truly believed that enough people were either deeply pro-Hillary or would vote for her as a matter of necessity that they didn't actually need my vote. I thought that if we managed to get a Black man elected, IN THE US, *TWICE*--if we motivated enough voters, did enough caucusing, mobilized enough callers and got enough people registered (and i did it all, even after losing the Bush/Gore one), we would have no real trouble getting a white woman from US political royalty with relatively conservative views in the big seat. I still believed in that momentum, that beauty we found during Barack's first run. Anything was possible, so why worry, really? I couldn't in good conscience abstain, but surely voting my conscience with a third party candidate wouldn't hurt anything, really. Not with a Dem powerhouse on the ballot, right? And then it happened. The impossible, the unthinkable. The ableist, racist-dogwhistle idiot with the speaking ability of a chimp, with a cadre of absolute morons at his back, actually got himself elected. (Sort of. Or even that he could cheat the system enough to slide by, which was even more frightening.) And I knew I had made a terrible mistake, and so did enough others as to help to cause this insanity to happen. That night, clinging to my then-wife with my heart in my throat at how close it was, terror rising in me... I would have taken it back in a microsecond. But i couldn't. And you won't be able to either. And this time we are fully aware that it could happen again. That it will be worse this time. TBC

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

The Republikkkans have been covertly funding minor 3rd party candidates for decades. The RepubliKKKlans are a vocal “numerical MINORITY.” To be successful, which they are more often than the Dems, they must pull out all the stops and do everything possible to siphon votes away from the Dems. They suppress black votes, or any group or geographic region which tends to lean blue. They also fund the “my vote doesn’t matter” and “both parties are the same” propaganda that keeps people who would have other wise voted blue from voting at all. At the local level the often fund someone with a similar name to their Dem rival. They encourage Kanye in the hopes of diverting black votes and they are pushing RFK junior in the hopes of diverting uniformed Dems. RFK Jr is the black sheep of the family and shares No Democratic values with his strongly Democratic family but many people don’t know that.

Putin and the GOP oligarchs channeled money into Jill Stein in 2016 and again this year. The Green Party always siphons off votes from the Dems since they both support the same ideals. The “Bernie or Bust” movement was pushed heavily by oligarch political operatives to siphon off first time voters from Hilary. Many of those voters didn’t understand the primary process where you first vote the person who most represents you before rallying around the party in the general election. A low-level Republican operative even claims to have started the Bernie or Bust movement although this is debatable.

Ralph Nader has said that had he known he would cost Dem Al Gore the win in 2000 that he would not have run. That blunder doomed us to two terms of dumb ass George “Dubya” Bush/Darth Cheney, which in many ways was worse than Trump. Those two clowns (Cheney was literally the shadow president) gave us the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those wars turned the entire Muslim world against us and strained relations with our NATO allies, cost us trillions, led to tens of thousands of American soldiers being killed or maimed, and raised the deficit to unheard of levels. They also caused two energy crises,one before 9/11 and one after Katrina, that led to record high gas prices that were higher than pandemic levels in many parts of the country. They also allowed a major city, New Orleans, to be wiped off the map and forcibly relocated its residents its poor and minority communities across the country at gun point.

Republikkkans win because they always vote as a solid block in every single election and they do it as if their very lives depended on it. Now some might rebut this by bringing up the Libertarian Party. This lunatic fringe party is basically the same as the Republicans. Most of them in the general election will end up voting GOP but an insignificant number spread out nationwide.

The Dems need to stop trying to claim every single group out their and desperately need to help recreate their union base which Republicans, starting with Reagan, have been killing off. The Dems claim both the Jewish and Muslim people but both groups largely vote Republican. The Dems try to claim all immigrant groups but many don’t vote, aren’t citizens yet, or lean to the autocratic Republican Party because it reminds them of the strongmen of their home countries. The Hispanics are claimed by the Dems but fully one third of them are registered Republicans with the rest going either way. How many elections have the south Florida Cubans cost us with their unyielding support of Republicans wanting to endlessly punish the Castro brothers in Cuba?

The left needs to realize the Hispanics are not a solid block and need to launch a massive outreach program to those who could be swayed left. A disproportionate number of Hispanics are white or white passing and heavily favor the racist Republicans. The letting go of unions and the failure to recruit Hispanics are the two biggest ongoing mistakes of the Dems. But the Dems aren’t as organized or as well funded as the GOP which has unlimited dark money from neo-Nazi autocrats. The legions of dumb ass Evangelicals and racist alt-right groups also help in bringing the Dems down and that’s something else entirely that needs to be addressed. We can’t win playing the game of division. We need to win over voters in massive numbers and do it asap. Dem leadership needs to convince the rank and file that the GOP only supports the wealthy, the religious fringe, and the deplorable racists.

[burnitalldowndarling]

https://www.tumblr.com/burnitalldowndarling/744870483940524032/whats-been-particularly-vile-to-me-is-this-group

#alladis#the left started to die when the white people took over#obama derangement syndrome hit them just as hard#they've just displaced their bigotry in more convoluted ways Really? How so? /genuine

Short on time so not a lot of links or theory, but I think a major example of what I'm talking about is the white leftist dismissal of "identity politics." What they mean by idpol is marginalized people taking pride in their identities or talking about bigotry, which white leftists typically frame as a distraction from more important issues. Thing is, the "more important" issues tend to be those of primary importance to white men, such as UBI or copyleft -- but it's not idpol when they do it. Another example is the embrace of class-centered (also called "class first" and "class reductionist") leftism. Addressing class disparities and economic justice does help marginalized groups as well, but do remember that the people who stand to gain the most from class uplift are those who were already well-off -- as white cis people tend to be, in America, thanks to historical and systemic bigotry. The rising tide floats all boats, but those who already had speed boats in the water are still going to do better than the folks surviving on inflatable rafts.

Identity-centric politics such as anti-racism have always addressed class and economic justice issues, but had the added benefit of centering the most vulnerable groups. The idea was that if you address the needs of/reduce harm to those groups first, everyone still benefits, but you save more lives. In their rejection of idpol, the American left now often ignores harm reduction, denigrates incremental improvements that benefit marginalized groups, and weakens the whole coalition by permitting established power hierarchies and bigotries to run rampant. See the "dirtbag left". See also Bernie Sanders' own 2016 campaign staff revolting because he failed to address racism, racial and gendered pay disparities, and sexual assault. How's he going to build a progressive national coalition when he can't even get his own house in order, progressively?

And I blame white leftists, along with white conservatives, for Trump's election in 2016. These are the people who kept pushing third-party voting, "boycotting" voting, and accelerationist nonsense like the idea that letting Trump get elected would hasten The Glorious Revolution -- never mind if it killed a few poor or brown people along the way. These are people who attacked and dismissed marginalized people online (especially Black and queer women) whenever they pointed out the dangers of a Trump win. They were absolutely vile in their sexism toward Hillary Clinton and anyone who supported her. In a lot of cases these were "leftist" influencers and such who embraced Gamergate and other harassment campaigns, and used the techniques of same against their fellow leftists -- and surprise, surprise, several years later a whole lot of the most prominent ones have come out as fascists. They got right-wing radicalized during the 2000s and 2010s same as white conservatives, in other words; they're just as racist, just as gender essentialist, just as anti-semitic and classist and so on. They just like UBI too. And they're better at using therapy-speak or communist-speak to hide their bigotry.

Tl;dr, while there are plenty of white leftists who are doing the work and doing it right, the most prominent face of leftism for the last 10 years has been the dirtbags, the brocialists, the accelerationists, etc -- people who IMO make the left weaker, and who are frequently dangerous to the very same vulnerable groups that the left should be centering. And way too many of them have become very wealthy from doing so, at which point a lot of them stop being progressive. Almost as if they were only ever in it to advance themselves, in the first place.

[darkmaga-retard]

eugyppius

Sep 18, 2024

Last Sunday, a totally crazy man named Ryan Wesley Routh hid in the bushes outside the fence of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach with a rifle, apparently waiting to ambush Donald Trump while he played a game of golf. Secret Service agents, who had failed to secure the perimeter of the golf course, noticed Routh’s rifle protruding from the shrubbery and shot at him. Routh fled, but was later arrested. Here is looking like a lunatic in the back of a police car:

Routh has been a convicted felon since 2002, after he barricaded himself in a building with an automatic weapon. He’s also collected criminal charges for possession of stolen goods, possession of a stolen motor vehicle and various driving offences – all while working as a builder and alienating a wide variety of people along the way:

Saili Levi, the owner of a vanilla farm [in Hawaii], hired Mr. Routh to build what Mr. Levi called a small “shop on wheels” so he could more easily haul his products to farmer’s markets. Mr. Levi found Mr. Routh to be a “scattered” man who seemed unable to accept responsibility. Mr. Levi said that Mr. Routh’s work was shoddy, and that after the two had verbally sparred about it Mr. Levi received an email full of cutting insults and references to Mr. Routh’s involvement in international conflicts. “I spent 5 months in Ukraine last year,” Mr. Routh wrote, “and 3 months there this year, and 2 weeks in DC and 2 weeks in Taiwan this year volunteering and trying to supply thousands of Afghan soldiers to help win the war.” “Perhaps I would be happier dead on the front lines than dealing with rich people in fancy cars as I drive old broken down vehicles and hoping to keep my account out of the negative and hoping for food to eat,” he added. “China and Russia will certainly win at this rate.”

As we would expect from a crazy person, Routh’s political allegiances show no clear pattern. He claims to have supported Trump in 2016, but he didn’t vote in that election. Later he turned on Trump and used his Twitter account to express support for Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, to deride Biden as“sleepy Joe,” and to advocate for Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy in the 2024 Republican primary. All the while he appears to have made various small donations to Democratic organisations.

[decolonize-the-everything]

In 2016, I went balls to the wall for Bernie - was a registered democrat for the duration of the primaries, became a state delegate for Bernie, went to the Philly DNC in support of Bernie. I saw first hand how broken the system was - counting delegates by hand raising, expecting people to physically be in person and take off work without pay, providing no child care services or transportation assistance, how lifelong democrats walked through the delegate aisles to tell all Bernie supporters "when Bernie loses, you're still gonna vote blue." I canvassed houses of registered democrats in Iowa to talk to them about Bernie, and the responses were either: "Bernie is way too radical, Hillary is getting my vote" or "I can't afford to take off work/I don't have someone to babysit/I'm too disabled to get to the caucus, but Bernie has my full support and I wish I could participate." People seem to forget how hard folx went for Bernie, how he and Hillary were neck-and-neck. They seem to forget that the superdelegates chose Hillary - despite seeing a massive swell of voter turnout and participation in the system because of a candidate that was finally outside what the establishment was wanting to prop up. Despite seeing how much Bernie stirred and lit up the voters, they fought against the very demographic that they constantly try to win over. The establishment will always pick their people, regardless of what The People want. The experience was disheartening, it was eye opening, it was cruel, it was rigged. It still is all of those things.

And instead of reading your frustrations, your needs, your real pain, people will just... blame you for how the system is set up? They really think non-voters are the problem? That is telling me that they don't really know how the system is set up beyond the ballot - they haven't actually gone through the state delegate process start to finish nor have they even educated themselves on what the process looks like and what obstacles were put in place (that the establishment, by the way, doesn't want changed). The established parties don't want to digitize the process - they still want people to physically show up in spaces (and a candidate will LOSE state delegates if people who sign up to be delegates don't PHYSICALLY show up on a specific day, at a specific time, for several hours to be counted), but they won't offer child care services, they won't pay for travel or work missed. They would rather blame non-voters rather than make the process accessible.

This is by design, this is not a fluke.

I don't know how many of your anons actually have been inside or around Republican circles, but damn a lot of what they're spouting at you I have heard straight up in Republican dominated spaces. "We don't like Trump, but we can't let a democrat win - we will get killed, our families will be broken, the country will collapse. Life as we know it is under attack and on the verge of destruction. You have to vote Republican no matter what."

I say all of this also as an indigenous, trans, queer activist. I say all this as someone who puts together rallies, workshops, protests, and spaces of healing. I say this as a trans refugee, displaced due to hostile legislation, still working out housing. I see you, I hear you, and you are not my enemy. You are not the reason why things are as they are. The system has failed us all, the system is rigged, thank you for all the on the ground work you're doing outside the state. I think these anons are cowards and punching down - they need to direct that anger towards democrats and republicans. They should read your posts, get angry (about what the system is, how you've been treated by it, and where it is now) and tear into the establishment that has done you (and all of us) wrong. The victim blaming has got to stop.

Agree

[nerianasims]

First, please do not say "should" or "should not" about any of this. "Should" doesn't matter. Also, I voted for Hillary Clinton, so keep that firmly in your thoughts throughout this please.

I want people to stop worrying about the election and start working about the election. I want people to stop bothering with Tumblr leftists and such. Because that's not where the votes are and that's not what cost Hillary the election in 2016.

Biden surrounds himself with people who know what they're doing. He knows how to campaign. He knows how to tell Trump to shut up. He won once when he was at more of a disadvantage than he is now. Please do phone bank and go door to door for him, and definitely talk to any undecided friends and family in person. Wasting time and energy on the internet is exactly what right-wing propaganda campaigns want you to do.

Did you know more Bernie primary voters voted for Hillary in 2016 than Hillary primary voters voted for Obama in 2008? (Also I remember the smearing of women who were in favor of Obama in 2008. They told us we were just trying to get dick then too.) There's also this canard that the far leftist voters who were interested in Democratic primaries for the first time because of Bernie would have voted for Hillary otherwise. Nonsense! They would have voted for the Green Party, or Republicans, or Libertarians, or written in Mickey Mouse, if they bothered to vote at all. Believe the far left when they say they won't vote for Democrats. Especially believe people when they say nothing could have induced them to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Hillary was hated for decades before 2016. Virulently, obsessively, throughout the country. It was like nothing else I've ever seen in my life. Starting when I was in high school, I had to deal with random people going off on Hillary Clinton on a regular basis. Professors would devote chunks of their entirely unrelated classes to hating her.

Bernie would have won against Trump in 2016. So would Elizabeth Warren. So would almost any politician, no matter their race, gender, sexuality, etc. So many people who were free from being subjected half their lives to intense Hillary hatred because of their class, region, or whatever, refuse to hear this fact. Almost everyone I knew hated this woman by the 2010s, and I never met anyone who actually liked her by that point. Most of the people I knew irl voted for her, but they didn't like it.

By the way, even people I knew who used to like Hillary started to dislike her after she sided with smearing Monica Lewinsky, and after Hillary didn't divorce her cheating husband who humiliated her and disrespected a young woman he sexually manipulated on the international stage. Whether they should or should not is not the issue. But you're missing the plot if you think it was sexism to dislike Hillary for this. We still voted for her! But how many campaigned for her? It's not like Hillary's campaign gave people in swing states materials to help her out anyway...

[wanderingmind867]

My Voting Record (US Democratic Primaries: 1844-2024):

1844 Democratic Primaries: Martin Van Buren

1848 Democratic Primaries: George Dallas

1852 Democratic Primaries: William O. Butler

1856 Democratic Primaries: N/A (No candidate sounds very good)

1860 Democratic Primaries: N/A (No candidate sounds good)

1864 Democratic Primaries: N/A (No candidate sounds very good).

1868 Democratic Primaries: James E. English

1872 Democratic Primaries: N/A (Democrats supported the Liberal Republicans that year. Their primary is in my Third party primaries notes).

1876 Democratic Primaries: Samuel Tilden

1880 Democratic Primaries: N/A (None of the candidates sound very good, honestly).

1884 Democratic Primaries: Grover Cleveland

1888 Democratic Primaries: Grover Cleveland

1892 Democratic Primaries: Horace Boies

1896 democratic Primaries (Top Four):

1. William Jennings Bryan

2. Richard P. Bland

3. Horace Boies

4. Henry Teller

1900 Democratic Primaries: William Jennings Bryan

1904 Democratic Primaries (Top Two):

1. Alton B. Parker

2. Nelson A. Miles

1908 Democratic Primaries: William Jennings Bryan

1912 Democratic Primaries: Judson Harmon

1916 Democratic Primaries: N/A (although I like Woodrow Wilson's fashion sense, he's also a rascist eugenicist. I can't support him).

1920 Democratic Primaries (Top Two):

1. Thomas R. Marshall

2. Al Smith

1924 Democratic Primaries (Top Three):

1. Al Smith

2. Robert L. Owen

3. Oscar Underwood (mostly just because he hated the KKK)

1928 Democratic Primaries: Al Smith

1932 Democratic Primaries: Al Smith

1936 Democratic Primaries: Upton Sinclair (my protest vote against Roosevelt from the left. How I wish Huey Long could have ran that year…)

1940 Democratic Primaries: Franklin D. Roosevelt

1944 Democratic Primaries: Franklin D. Roosevelt

1948 Democratic Primaries: Harry Truman (although I wish Henry Wallace was one of the candidates).

1952 Democratic Primaries (Top Two Candidates):

1. G. Mennen Williams

2. Estes Kefauver

1956 Democratic Primaries: Estes Kefauver

1960 Democratic Primaries: Wayne Morse

1964 Democratic Primaries: Lyndon B. Johnson

1968 Democratic Primaries: Eugene McCarthy

1972 Democratic Primaries (Top Five Candidates):

1. George McGovern

2. Shirley Chisholm

3. Hubert Humphrey

4. Patsy Mink

5. Terry Sanford

1976 Democratic Primaries (Top Three Candidates):

1: Frank Church

2: Mo Udall

3: Fred Harris

1980 Democratic Primaries: Jimmy Carter (my beliefs might be closer to Ted Kennedy, but I hate the Kennedy Clan. Except Eunice. Eunice is fine).

1984 Democratic Primaries (My Top Three Candidates):

1. Jesse Jackson

2. George McGovern

3. Walter Mondale

1988 Democratic Primaries (my top two candidates):

1. Jesse Jackson

2. Paul Simon

1992 Democratic Primaries: Tom Harkin

1996 Democratic Primaries: Nobody (I hate Bill Clinton)

2000 Democratic Primaries: Bill Bradley

2004 Democratic Primaries (Top Three Candidates):

1. Dennis Kucinich

2. Carol Moseley Braun

3. A tie between Al Sharpton and Howard Dean

2008 Democratic Primaries: John Edwards

2012 Democratic Primaries: Barack Obama

2016 Democratic Primaries: Bernie Sanders (I'd have taken Martin O'Malley too though)

2020 Democratic Primaries (Top Four Candidates):

1. Bernie Sanders

2. Elizabeth Warren

3. Tom Steyer

4. Marianne Williamson (She is definitely weird and new agey, but Wikipedia's summary of her policies don't sound too bad)

2024 Democratic Primaries: Marianne Williamson (I don't expect her to win at all, but I appreciate the challenge to Biden from the left. Remind him the progressive wing is still alive. Also, screw RFK Jr. I hate all the Kennedys. Except Eunice. She made the special Olympics; she can stay.)

PS: I made one of these for the Republican Primaries too. I might post that later.

[dhaaruni]

I'm not an expert in labor or immigration policy, but I think that one massively underdiscussed reason that Democrats aren't progressive immigration other than the electorate's massive antipathy to increased immigration is that the party is beholden to unions (including the teachers' unions whose popularity absolutely plummeted during COVID-19), and historically speaking, labor unions aren't immigrant friendly for a variety of reasons.

There's a reason that Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who have the top 2 scores from the AFL-CIO, both ran on being tough on the border in 2006, and Sanders even voted against George W. Bush's immigration reform bill in 2007!

In 2016, Trump's aggressive rhetoric on immigration is commonly cited as one of the primary reasons he eked out a win, including winning union voters outright in every single Midwestern state except Illinois. Even in 2020 when Biden won back the Blue Wall, he still lost union voters in Pennsylvania.

The thing is, the Sunbelt isn't reliably Democratic and Texas is still a half million votes from flipping blue on the presidential level let alone down-ballot, so Democrats are still dependent on the Blue Wall to win the Senate and Congressional majorities, which incidentally is also why Biden is really emphasizing the return of American manufacturing (aka running against free trade).

All that said, it's kind of funny to me how so many of the progressive politics bros on Twitter are simultaneously super pro-union, believing Midwestern Democrats are the GOAT while Virginia Democrats are the dregs of the universe (or something) and also genuinely believe that Biden's immigration policy is the same as Stephen Miller's under Trump. Aside from the fact that Biden's immigration policy isn't the same as Trump's, it feels like a very obvious ideological contradiction that they all seem to miss, but I digress.

[mariacallous]

on GenZ as we've said many times, they've been "taught" marketed to really, that engagement is... consumption and aesthetics, that they can post from their bedroom and thats the height of political engagement

part of this is companies and brands selling themselves as "woke" we mock the Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad but it was only the worst and most in your face version of a thing going on at every level of the market and so many young people bought what was sold

but also we have to blame Bernie. For many many Millennials the Obama campaign in 2008 was their first campaign their first engagement, for many GenZers 2016 Bernie was the first one, it spoke their language, memes very on-line etc. and From day 1 it was two things, that mainstream Dems are the worst and really the true enemy. I tell this story all the time, but one of the only Bernie vols to come work for HFA after the primary, and he was hardcore, he drove from NH to SC to knock doors for Bernie, and after deciding to help us most of his Bernie friends wouldn't speak to him any more. Any ways he joked that the Bernie office they used to say "Trump voters are just Bernie voters who need to be educated" that was the world view. The second thing was the idea that it was "rigged" that the system all of society is "rigged" against you and the need for a "revolution" Bernie doesn't mean a Marxist overthrow of capitalism when he says "Revolution" but he boosted and platformed a lot of people who did mean that and is verbiage really tells a young person "there's no slow change, there's no working toward change, there's revolution and status quo and your life will suck till revolution" and also that Democratic systems are rigged, the vote is rigged, Progressives can't win because it's rigged and there's no point voting for a normie and "shit-lib" whatever because they're the real problem.

So thats why GenZ is the least involved, least engaged even while being on paper most progressive, most queer, and in terms of LGBT GenZers, some of the most targeted and I guess on the abortion issue as well since they're of childbearing age and most likely to need and abortion.

And then they get stuck in the echo chamber and get it reinforced...

[qqueenofhades]

One of the most surprising things I learned recently is that Bernie doesn’t do well with Black voters, and I was wondering if you knew why that is? I feel like his platform is fairly popular so I just wonder why he fails to win their votes?

It's because Black Democrats a) like actual Democrats, and b) also don't have time to waste with empty moral posturing when they are intimately aware of how public policy and progressive (or reactive/reactionary) politics affect their everyday life, in a way that a lot of privileged white Bernie Bros were utterly unequipped to consider (and indeed, attacked the Black Democrats for "not knowing what's best for them," which is not paternalistic or racist at all!) Black Democrats also know how important voting is, because of the obvious fact that they were disenfranchised, had their political accomplishments totally dismantled at the end of Reconstruction, had to literally fight through dogs, gas, guns, and screaming white supremacists to exercise their vote and win their civil rights in the 1960s, and are consistently targeted today by white Republicans attempting to gerrymander, restrict, penalize, or otherwise eradicate their rights. Black Democrats don't vote for empty performative politics, they vote for results. Bernie is great at one, and very bad at the other. Three guesses which.

Elderly Black Democrats in South Carolina allegedly "saved" Biden's 2020 campaign (after Bernie had done well in the EXTREMELY white Iowa and New Hampshire primaries; the ordering of the primaries and the excessive prognostications attached to Uber White Midwestern/New England Results is dumb, but anyway). And that was because Black Democrats have good reason to like Biden. He spent eight years willingly supporting and never upstaging the first Black president, he picked the first Black/Asian woman as his vice president, he put the first Black woman on SCOTUS, he has spent years championing their concerns at an actual tangible and legislative level, and they know that they can trust him. By contrast, Bernie is one of those leftists who dismisses all other kinds of oppression as secondary to the class struggle and thinks that racism, sexism, misogyny, etc. are all inferior injustices to economic injustice. And yes! Economic injustice is very much a thing! But if you go around telling marginalized communities to their faces that their many, many years of lived experience with racial oppression isn't as "real" as economic injustice, and/or that racism will magically be solved by economic redress and you don't need to do anything else about it, don't be surprised when that is not a winning message.

Besides, and as noted: Bernie has spent fifty years in politics and achieved nothing really meaningful (unlike Biden, who has also been in politics for fifty years and has real and significant legislative accomplishments as senator, vice president, and president). His policies are on-paper progressive, but Black Democrats and Black people in general aren't a monolithically progressive voting bloc, and have other concerns and issues that intersect with their support (or lack thereof) for him. There are very few Black people who can afford to take their vote for granted, or to vote for somebody who hasn't demonstrated any interest in going through the legislative process to achieve real results, and instead spends most of his time talking loudly to left-leaning white progressives and cultivating a "Only I, Great Bernie, Can Solve Your Problems" political mentality, which then spills into sore loserdom and was an issue in both 2008 and (most visibly and unforgivably) in 2016.

Basically, in my view, Bernie mostly exists to be the totem for a certain subset of privileged white leftists to club the Democratic Party over the head and set impossible standards of what they "should" be doing, which in turn actively undermines support for the Democrats and helps nakedly fascist Republicans win more elections. And despite nominally running as a Democrat, he in fact is not a Democrat (he sits as an independent) and makes no effort to court central Democratic constituencies. Of which, and obviously, African-Americans are one of the greatest parts, due to consistently voting to get this country out of the mess that fascist white people keep trying to plunge it into. Any candidate who does not understand that, and does not make serious efforts to do so, likewise should not be taken seriously. Therefore, no matter how mad it makes his frothing internet stans (who likewise are not serious people with actual political opinions), the Democratic party apparatus has no real need to humor him and his self-aggrandizing constant talking about things that he never, ever actually does shit about.

[takeonmetakemeon]

Because I just read part of a column that suggested the Democratic Party stepped in to keep Bernie Sanders from winning the nomination in 2020, I am once again going to point out why that's garbage and needs to be retired.

The first few nominating contests were tilted in Sanders' favor. Iowa and Nevada were caucuses, not primaries. Sanders had previously done much better in caucuses. The only primary in those first three contests was in New Hampshire, a ridiculously tiny state that shares what passes for its long border with his equally tiny state.

Rep. Clyburn did not and does not have the power to sway the votes of most Black voters in South Carolina. Black voters are not sheep who do what they're told. The vast majority were voting for Biden regardless.

The result in all of those first four contests was predictable. The whole election outcome was predictable, frankly.

Giving Sanders' victories in the first three contests any kind of national importance was journalistic malpractice. Repeating it now borders on propaganda.

There is a strong anti-Hillary contingent among political nerds and I am sick of it. It's been eight years and they still cannot let it go.

Look, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and lost the election by a small number of votes in a few states. Four years later, Joe Biden won the election by a smaller number of votes in a few different states. *After* voters had lived through four years of Donald Trump's unpopular leadership.

But Biden consistently did better against Trump than Sanders did in opinion polls from the time pollsters began asking the question.

Biden was the better choice. And if he was, then so was Hillary, who had almost the same result but in a year that naturally favored Republicans. Biden claimed he could have won in 2016, but he barely won in 2020 when the political environment was more favorable for Democrats. He was wrong. It shouldn't shock anyone. He was wrong about his chances compared to Harris's, too.

Hillary Clinton won the nomination because more Democrats wanted her. And then she lost to an opponent who was more popular than you want to believe. You don't understand how other people view either of them.

Let go of "Bernie would have won" and join us in the real world, where Hillary Clinton was not a flawed, unlikable candidate or the only Democrat Donald Trump could have beaten. Where internet bros have limited reach. Where people don't know what a subreddit is, don't know what YATA stands for and don't care when they find out. Where people think J.D. Vance is an idiot because every sentence he speaks sounds like he does. WhEre tYpInG lIkE tHiS hAs nO mEAniNG. Where post-menopausal women not only outnumber barely post-adolescence men who think 30 is old, but also outnumber men who think 30 is barely adult. Where Black voters who judge candidates by additional rules you don't seem to know about much less understand have an actual say. Who don't have to argue about whether or not it's pandering to say you carry hot sauce in your purse. In other words, a world where people voted for Hillary Clinton—and Joe Biden—by choice.

Additionally, Trump did not remake the Republican Party in his image. He won the nomination precisely because he had more support than long-serving leaders. Party leaders fell in line when they understood that and saw that he could win. You don't need to make up any other story to explain what's happened.

And did party leaders push Biden to step aside? Yes. But they didn't exactly do it in the face of widespread opposition by Democratic voters, or donors, or—most of all—media folks like you.

There is no one behind the scenes controlling the political process.

Honestly.

[buddieisgoingcanon2024]

I know this breaks people’s brains but Hillary was truly hated by a lot of people in America. It wasn’t just the Republicans, Dems did not like her either. It was miscalculation for her to get into politics after Bill’s presidency, but her ego was her true downfall. She was never going to win in 2016 in part because of Bill’s presidency and her own faults (not campaigning) really fucking up the Blue Wall. Let’s not forget who actually started the Birther Conspiracy that Trump picked up for his political career.

R’s ex might have done that stand up, but we also shouldn’t be voting someone based on gender. Hillary’s gender doesn’t excuse all her poor policy choices and her shifting with the polls. 2016 was a weird election with two of the most disliked candidates ever, you had about 9 million voters go from Obama to Trump and people leaving the top line blank. If I remember correctly, he was a Bernie voter that was very upset of how the primary went down (if you saw what went down, you would under the anger). I don’t condone voting for Trump, but a small percentage of Bernie voters turned to Trump after the democratic primary shitshow. R then became very anti Trump (regretting his 2016 vote?) and we know he didn’t vote for him in 2020.

All of this to say, we don’t know for sure what his politics are, and we can’t base it off women he has dated. C is very conservative, while M seems liberal. What we do know is that he doesn’t like Trump and he cares about the environment, which we have seen him talk about again after leaving C.

Thanks for your insight anon.

[cybermoonmoon]

“Missives of State”

This from 2020. It's now 2024. We made 'none' of the below corrections so are facing the same problems. No. 45 is back and wants vengeance. With Biden being frail with age and insisting on running again. No. 45 is likely to be elected.

Sidney Smith: 

For the first 240 years of our Republic there were assumed values with being an American Head of State. Our current culture has abrogated this. Now we need to write down specific rules of behavior. Rules that were once simply a given, but now must be codified in law.

Peter Cedric Rock Smith: I agree on this point: "To prevent another President Trump, the presidency itself must be diminished. Congress must reclaim the power to make war and peace. The White House must submit to greater scrutiny and be legally required to do so. Measures should be put in place to detect presidential malpractice early on, stop it, and punish it. None of this should require changes to the constitution, just changes to the law and political culture.

The political parties must also reform themselves. Their processes for choosing a presidential candidate should not be a free-for-all. Trump was able to waltz into the Republican primaries in 2016 with no long-standing membership of the party and no experience of public office. Similarly, independent Senator Bernie Sanders fades in and out of the Democratic Party as the electoral season dictates. These practices must be brought to an end.

Sidney Smith: 

Being a catholic survivor I'm somewhat...on good days immune to the cult of saviors. The whole political system needs retooling to prevent our current situation from happening again. What if the next Trump from right or left is emotionally stable and intelligent. This and with an actual plan for total personal power. This era has shown we can no longer trust that who we elect is truly worthy of the position. We must redress the openings for abuse. Other nations have done or attempted this. We're a young country. The Trump administration is our second internal challenge to our continuance. The Civil War being the first. The outcome is not certain. The wheel is still in spin.

[dumbestthingiveeverheard]

Dumbest Thing I've Ever Heard: 8/14/2023

Fifth Place: Dean Phillips

Another day, another Democrat trying to push for somebody--anybody--to come out and primary President Biden for reasons that never make any fucking sense. Of course, Phillips is a "moderate Democrat" (read: Republican) who clearly wants Biden out of the way because of how progressive the President is--and honestly, I think Biden should welcome the hatred of people like this. I also cannot believe we live in a world where Joe Biden of all people is too progressive for some Democrats, but here we are.

Mind you, Biden is much more well liked not just among the insiders of the Democratic Party but also among the rank and file members who actually would vote in a primary. Meaning any chance of a primary against him is unlikely to be successful, but the fact that these idiots keep trying to run to Biden's right while assuming that's what the Democratic voter base wants (a large chunk of Democrats are too the left of Biden) is just sad. And that's not even getting into how Biden is seen as some sign of the status quo by these people--while they constantly want alternatives who are too his right and would more than likely continue the status quo, albeit with a younger face.

Of course, this fear about Biden being old is a totally manufactured concern by the political class. The average voter doesn't care how old a politician is--in fact, back in 2016 and 2020 the youngest voters went for Bernie Sanders, who is even older than Biden. This is all just bullshit designed to scare Biden into not running for re-election, and I am very happy he has not fallen for it.

Fourth Place: Kurt Schlichter

Speaking of primary challengers that have no chance of going anywhere, Ron DeSantis is still running for President--and Kurt over at Townhall firmly believes he'll be the nomination. You see, according to Kurt, the real reason why DeSantis isn't leading in the polls is because nobody has heard of him yet:

Remember, this is a primary race, not a Twitter popularity race. The simple fact is that the polls in July 2023 do not reflect the real situation on the ground in 2023, much less 2024 when the actual voting happens. You know who are active right now? The activists. And those aren’t polls of activists. Those are polls of regular people living regular lives who think “Yeah, I like Trump and Trump’s getting a raw deal from the scumbag prosecutors, and he’s the only guy I really know about, so I’m going to put his name down.” They haven’t had to think hard about it yet. They haven’t had to weigh the facts. They haven’t really looked at Ron DeSantis’s record – if they’re looking at Twitter, they’re going to think that he parties with Paul Ryan over at George Soros’s crash pad. That kind of dumb lie is easy to dispel, and when people see that they’ve been lied to, they’re going to look deeper to find the truth. 

You mean four years of the media shoving him down our throats hasn't been enough time for the average person to know his record? And none of this is even getting into the stupidity of assuming that people who are political enough to vote in the Republican primary also haven't taken the time to know who DeSantis is.

Mind you, more exposure to DeSantis does not seem to be helping him--if anything, the opposite seems to be the case. Remember two years ago when DeSantis was seen as the 2024 frontrunner? Some were even predicting that he'd replace Donald Trump as head of the Republican Party by the midterm elections--and that never happened. That is because people saw exactly who Ron DeSantis was, and they didn't like it.

Third Place: Ron DeSantis

A short follow up on my last entry, it seems like Ron has trouble keeping the attention of the people who already know of him. Here's some reporting from Mediaite:

Donald Trump literally overshadowed Ron DeSantis — with planes – at the Iowa State Fair on Saturday, flying over the event and prompting the throngs of GOP voters to chant “we want Trump!” while the Florida governor was flipping burgers and trying to woo support.

This man seriously thinks people want him to be President.

Second Place: Karl Lake

The former Arizona candidate for Governor challenged somebody to "milk a bull" in order to prove that there are only two genders. Of course, given people aren't steer--and people assigned male at birth can produce milk if they have enough estrogen in their system, by the way--this comparison was seen as really dumb, because it is.

Winner: Merrick Garland

I talked Friday about Merrick's choice to create a special council to investigate Hunter Biden, which was little more than an attempt to appease Republicans--and said attempt has failed as many Republicans, including ones who asked for the exact special prosecutor Garland picked, are still upset with him.

So Garland has lost all Biden supporters and Biden critics--this is the most Merrick Garland move of all time.

Merrick Garland, you've done the dumbest thing I've ever heard.