***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[aepps20]

“tHe DnC iS CrOoKeD” says the man who threatened voter fraud if things didn’t go his way

It sometimes comes to that. Own da libs by voting against Dums to take some tums to make sure Trump wins again.

 

[rexanglorum]

I wish I had the fortitude do voter fraud and maybe I would if Bernie were on the ballot in the general. But we got two senile rapists to choose from and I'll be voting for the same one as you.

 

[aepps20]

I wish I had the fortitude do voter fraud and maybe I would if Bernie were on the ballot in the general. But we got two senile rapists to choose from and I'll be voting for the same one as you.

Da Don thanks you for your vote.

 

[rexanglorum]

It’s tempting to go full NazBol or black pilled mode or accelerationist mode but we all know that by the time the election is close and the prospect of seeing the MAGA Hogs crying becomes a real possibility, me, Gritty and rest of the supersoldiers will be running vigilante voter suppression against Republicans. We’ll bring the same winning synthesis that we had in 2018.

 

[obeahmyal7]

You only started giving a **** about poor and black people well into adulthood, before that you were a smug racist low life.

God damn

I know people are in their feelings but can we develop a sober analysis? I've been trying to process the following...

• The politics of numbers: during the 2016 and 2020 primaries, and under each presidential administration that I can remember, different factions have pointed to poll numbers to defend the electability, viability, success or failure of a candidate. There were times when I pointed to polling numbers for Sanders to beat back claims that Biden had no shot. There were other times when I ignored the polls. The point is that all of us here have been using those numbers in some way as part of an an ideological and political defense of our world views. The numbers are neutral. And even when we do rely on exit polls, there's so much unsaid (who was eligible to vote? Even if a voter cast their support for Biden, why was that?)

• We're still licking our wounds: How often we've re-lived the lead up to 2016. We heard it all: the DNC is rigged, and Sanders could have beat Trump. Others claimed and still assert that Sanders didn't support Clinton, and neither did his supporters. Folks who felt wronged by 'Bernie bro's' online, who are scarred for being called a 'neoliberal' still hold a grudge. But at the end of the day, can we agree that a candidate with tremendous baggage faced off against a con-man who had the backing of a criminal party, Russia, and other countries. Gerrymandering mattered far more than foreign election. After all, it was white men and white women who pulled the lever. They did not vote out of economic anxiety or because they were left behind, but because of their economic, political, and social interests in whiteness.

• The complexity of black voters: The strategy to run as a New Deal, FDR democratic did not work. It was not enough to persuade an older generation of black voters who supported Biden. This was neither because of some so-called 'false consciousness' nor because of proximity to Obama. Instead, I think it was because of 1). a pursuit of comfort and stability (as opposed to revolution), 2). a belief that if history's any guide, white working class Americans will overwhelmingly choose exclusion over redistribution.

• Stop punching at caricatures, stop leveraging abstractions: Not everyone who didn't support Sanders is a neoliberal. Not everyone who supports Sanders is a Bernie bro. Can we speak to the best in one another (except Dwalk and other jerks)? Can we stop talking about the 'working class' as a monolith, modifying it with the 'real' working class, acting as if we know 'them'? The best we can say is that there are social classes in America. Those social classes are also racialized. Class interests do not follow racialization in some universal way, and racialization does not mean a uniform class interest. Different groups develop investments, literal and figurative, in existing systems overtime. The historic investments offer insight into why people do what they do.

• Old slogans must be retired, new slogans developed: The "Sanders Beats Trump" bumper sticker was important during the primary. But because the prospect is now immaterial, that slogan must be retired. As RustyShackleford suggested , perhaps the slogan should be "Hold your nose, and vote Biden." That implies acknowledging a noxious, disturbing scent surrounding Biden, whom he surrounds himself with, and the kind of administration he might lead. But it also implies recognizing the very real difference between neoliberal governance and authoritarianism. It means continuing to dream more while also recognizing that to fight another day in the face of fascism is indeed a victory.

 

[-Red-]

I think it would be best if I start by saying I’m sorry to hear about your Daughter and I’m glad she ended up being okay. I will say I have had a similar situation happen getting hit with out of pocket medical costs because I was out of network and it sucks.

As for the rest of this there is a lot to digest here and I guess we start with NAFTA. Say NAFTA never gets passed in the first place. How confident are you that jobs never get shipped overseas anyways? I honestly don’t know a ton about it since I was 5 when it was enacted, but given the current manufacturing climate it’s a virtual certainty that some of these low skilled jobs would have moved to an overseas manufacturing plant with the spread of globalization. NAFTA or no NAFTA, that is a by product of capitalism. Hell, I worked for a company who created an entire subsidiary in India to do data input for $12 an hour so they didn’t have to pay one of our associates to do it. I’m fairly certain they could have easily hired people in the US to do the same but then they would have had to pay benefits. Absent legislation saying that corporations cannot offshore operations it would be virtually impossible to stop.

I don’t know enough about the rationale behind going to war with Iraq since I was like 13 when it happened, based on what I’ve listened to in some podcasts, many people made the decision to go to war based on fabricated intelligence by republicans. I honestly don’t know enough about it but in hindsight it was the wrong decision.

But on the flip side how many families have been destroyed because Bernie Sanders didn’t support background checks on gun purchases? How many communities were ruined? How many people died? It was real convenient for him to flip his stance in 2016 out of political expedience on that. Did you have the same anger for Bernie when he voted for the crime bill or does that anger only extend to Biden?

Were you angry with Bernie when you paid you medical bill even after he was claiming to have helped write the ACA as recent as the 2016 election? Were you angry with him for not having the foresight to push harder for a single payer system when democrats had the supermajority to get the ACA passed?

You talk about how he was able to get additional unemployment added to the Cares act but fail to mention the benefits added in the bill written in the Senate were actually worse than the benefits proposed by Pelosi and the house democrats. (Also he wasn’t the only person pushing for additional unemployment benefits)

Are you mad at him that he has talked about these same issues for 30 years but has seemingly passed nothing to get them fixed? I’m not at all saying Bernie is a failure by any means either. He has done a great job moving the conversation on issues that I care about, but at some point the conversation has to move from hypothetical to real world. At this point I would still love to hear how M4A goes from being a plan to a reality in our current political climate and necessitating 60 votes in the senate.

Yes, I agree that capitalists are going to find ways to maximize profits. But NAFTA greased the skids for this by allowing goods and capital to flow freely across borders while workers (labor) remained largely tethered to their country of origin. We opened the borders for capitalists but kept them closed for workers. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out who benefited and who lost here, and NAFTA is symptomatic of the general bipartisan consensus around (1) "free trade," that is, the free movement of capital, and (2) an utter disregard, if not active contempt, for working people. Biden, despite his "working-class" persona and rhetoric, has done little to nothing to deviate from this consensus.

The Iraq War was a disaster from before it was even launched. The intelligence was clearly shaky to anyone paying attention. Just as importantly, even if the intelligence was accurate, it still wouldn't have justified invading the country and overthrowing its government. Biden was at the forefront among Democrats beating the war drums. There is no excuse. And the notion that it doesn't matter because it was twenty years ago is simply ridiculous—with respect to the staggering human toll in the region, to the trillions of dollars we've spent on the war, and as a testament to the kind of leader Biden is.

I don't like Bernie's past positions on gun background checks nor his vote for the crime bill. That said, I don't know how many lives the background checks would have saved. Most of the gun violence that takes place in our society is in impoverished urban communities where background check laws likely would have made little to no difference over the years. Stronger background checks may have prevented a handful of terrible school shootings, though, I will definitely concede. As for the crime bill, I'd just point out that Bernie and Biden played about as opposite of roles as possible in the process for two people who both ended up voting for it. I still don't like that Bernie ended up voting for it, but they were not the same in regards to that bill nor the tough-on-crime movement among the Democrats.

If you want to go tit-for-tat on who has the more progressive legislative history between Bernie and Biden, it's not gonna be close, fam. It's just not. Bernie has not been perfect but he has been better than just about anyone else in Congress over the last 30 years. Biden has been on the exact opposite end of the spectrum as far as progressivism among Democrats is concerned.

And bro, much of Bernie's campaigns have been about trying to move these ideas from the margin closer to the center. In that respect, they have been a tremendous success. It's no surprise that Biden has "done more" in a sense as a member of Congress because he exists in the middle of the damn political spectrum. But much of what he's done has been ******* terrible. Hell, there are few things he seems to love more than "bipartisanship," which he is still utterly delusional about even after eight years as Obama's VP. But I'd also love to hear how Biden is going to get anything passed—anything worthwhile, at least—"in our current political climate and necessitating 60 votes in the Senate."

At the end of the day, the presidency isn't the end-all, be-all. But if you think presidents are basically interchangeable within an intraparty context because of that fact, we're going to disagree. And if you think that Joe Biden's inclusion of progressive policies in his platform based on political expedience, and that his history shows us he has no actual commitment to, is just as good as electing actual champions of those policies like Bernie and Warren, we're going to disagree. If you think that we need to vote for Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee for president regardless of any of that because Trump is truly dangerous as president, then we're going to agree. Unfortunately, but still

 

[-Red-]

I wanted a Warren presidency. She dropped out before primary voting happened in my state.

I then voted for Bernie (like I did in '16). Biden won Missouri.

Bernie dropped out. In Novemeber I will be voting for Biden. We cannot let 4 more years of the orange clown happen.

Where you at in MO?

 

[rexanglorum]

God damn

I know people are in their feelings but can we develop a sober analysis? I've been trying to process the following...

• The politics of numbers: during the 2016 and 2020 primaries, and under each presidential administration that I can remember, different factions have pointed to poll numbers to defend the electability, viability, success or failure of a candidate. There were times when I pointed to polling numbers for Sanders to beat back claims that Biden had no shot. There were other times when I ignored the polls. The point is that all of us here have been using those numbers in some way as part of an an ideological and political defense of our world views. The numbers are neutral. And even when we do rely on exit polls, there's so much unsaid (who was eligible to vote? Even if a voter cast their support for Biden, why was that?)

• We're still licking our wounds: How often we've re-lived the lead up to 2016. We heard it all: the DNC is rigged, and Sanders could have beat Trump. Others claimed and still assert that Sanders didn't support Clinton, and neither did his supporters. Folks who felt wronged by 'Bernie bro's' online, who are scarred for being called a 'neoliberal' still hold a grudge. But at the end of the day, can we agree that a candidate with tremendous baggage faced off against a con-man who had the backing of a criminal party, Russia, and other countries. Gerrymandering mattered far more than foreign election. After all, it was white men and white women who pulled the lever. They did not vote out of economic anxiety or because they were left behind, but because of their economic, political, and social interests in whiteness.

• The complexity of black voters: The strategy to run as a New Deal, FDR democratic did not work. It was not enough to persuade an older generation of black voters who supported Biden. This was neither because of some so-called 'false consciousness' nor because of proximity to Obama. Instead, I think it was because of 1). a pursuit of comfort and stability (as opposed to revolution), 2). a belief that if history's any guide, white working class Americans will overwhelmingly choose exclusion over redistribution.

• Stop punching at caricatures, stop leveraging abstractions: Not everyone who didn't support Sanders is a neoliberal. Not everyone who supports Sanders is a Bernie bro. Can we speak to the best in one another (except Dwalk and other jerks)? Can we stop talking about the 'working class' as a monolith, modifying it with the 'real' working class, acting as if we know 'them'? The best we can say is that there are social classes in America. Those social classes are also racialized. Class interests do not follow racialization in some universal way, and racialization does not mean a uniform class interest. Different groups develop investments, literal and figurative, in existing systems overtime. The historic investments offer insight into why people do what they do.

• Old slogans must be retired, new slogans developed: The "Sanders Beats Trump" bumper sticker was important during the primary. But because the prospect is now immaterial, that slogan must be retired. As RustyShackleford suggested , perhaps the slogan should be "Hold your nose, and vote Biden." That implies acknowledging a noxious, disturbing scent surrounding Biden, whom he surrounds himself with, and the kind of administration he might lead. But it also implies recognizing the very real difference between neoliberal governance and authoritarianism. It means continuing to dream more while also recognizing that to fight another day in the face of fascism is indeed a victory.

When I say “real working class” it means the multi racial and disproportionately feminine cohort of healthcare workers, teachers, retail and food service workers and lower paid civil servants. This is in contrast to the so called “white working class” which included white business owners and affluent retired who assume a working class affect (drives a pick up truck, wears denim and flannel) but who are part of the petty bourgeoisie.

There is a real working class and it does not look like the working class of the mainstream media’s imagining.

 

[-Red-]

Im guessing he's referring to the fact that Bernie Sander super fans are a group of congenitally incapable of taking a swift and righteous L.

I hate it so much, you lost, TAKE THE L, i don't want to hear excuses.


It's the lack of introspection and the inability to HUMBLY ACCEPT a FAIR L from, Hillary Clinton

that helped bring about the L they refuse to accept from Joe Biden.

Does this account for the fact that the response of Bernie supporters in here, upon learning of him ending his campaign, did not involve making a single excuse? Does it account for the hostility and derision aimed at those supporters that occurred in here when he ended his campaign?

Like, who in here is refusing to accept the loss to Biden? Or maybe that's a question for RustyShackleford since he's the one who brought up how prescient your insight is to the current discourse in here.

 

[RustyShackleford]

Does this account for the fact that the response of Bernie supporters in here, upon learning of him ending his campaign, did not involve making a single excuse? Does it account for the hostility and derision aimed at those supporters that occurred in here when he ended his campaign?

Like, who in here is refusing to accept the loss to Biden? Or maybe that's a question for RustyShackleford since he's the one who brought up how prescient your insight is to the current discourse in here.

So Rex is invisible now

 

[-Red-]

I remember seeing this Ava Duvernay tweet and wincing a bit for Bernie pre South Carolina.


Bernie fans responded to Ava with death threats and "lol omg but what about Harvey Weinstein" that they missed what this tweet represented.


A LOT OF BLACK PEOPLE LIKE THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

This whole, "yo the democratic party needs to be destroyed vote for Bernie you losers!" works with college students, works with younger people,

but someone like Ava Duverney; older black democrat women, the kind person you need to convince if you want to win in a non divided field



....that **** does not work and ended coming back to bite Bernie something serious.

Other Bernie supporters in the media (Yglesias and Levitz) tried to point out this dynamic and they got mocked my the Chapo/Jacobin/Young Turks loving crowd.

Bernie, the bernie supporting online media, and a ton of his fans, take the worst factions of the Democratic Party and try to broadly apply it to all members of the "establishment" or liberals in general.

Problem is in many areas, especially in the deep South, the Democratic Party is one of the few institutions that have people's back. Coates pointed out that the anti-establishment messaging runs into issues because Bernie doesn't really understand how he is coming off in some areas, to some people. You got a white dude from Vermont (who's record is not perfect) that has never been around, telling people to trust him over the party. However, the Democratic Party they think of is not really think of party elites in bed with Wall St., but the local black Democrats in their state that people generally view as good actors. So when those good actors say they rocking with Hillary or Joe over Bernie, it means a lot.

And then when people don't get buy in right away, many Sanders supporters get perplexed as to why that it, then comes the hot takes from his surrogates and media outlines that don't help.

People in the Bernie supporting media, want to harp on party elites not wanting Bernie to win. But gave little thought about how constantly ****ting on the Democratic Party constantly would play with the parties most loyal voters (Southern black voters, especially women), voters you need to win.

Welp, now you know. Hopefully the next person tries a different technique.

I agree with everything stated here.

I'd add some additional elements, but I don't disagree with any of this.

 

[aepps20]

I just want Rex and Rust to solve their differences with boxing.

 

[deleted]

Perhaps next election when Biden is either dead or loses to Trump we can all get the candidate we want

Spoiler

free burritos for everyone is a platform America can coalesce around

Typical lib scum canine...disgusting

 

[RustyShackleford]

When I say “real working class” it means the multi racial and disproportionately feminine cohort of healthcare workers, teachers, retail and food service workers and lower paid civil servants. This is in contrast to the so called “white working class” which included white business owners and affluent retired who assume a working class affect (drives a pick up truck, wears denim and flannel) but who are part of the petty bourgeoisie.

There is a real working class and it does not look like the working class of the mainstream media’s imagining.

That's the people Bernie was appealing to when he tweeted that the Democratic Party doesn't know how to speak to the white working class, or when he said no Trump is racist, or when he made excuses for white people could not vote for black candidates, so when he he recently said that white voters in Mississippi of all places are unfairly being categorized as racist (even though no one was making that argument).

Because those were the actions I have routinely called out, and those are the actions that motivated my post. The post you quoted to inform me about the "real working class", to handwave Sanders buffoonery.

 

[-Red-]

I don't disagree with those issues, although we probably disagree on how directly correlated NAFTA was to some of them. but the case that trade deals have hurt the US work force that many on the left make only resonates so much for me

yes free trade has hurt the working class in the US who struggle economically by First World standards and at the same time helps millions/billions? of people born into truly unfortunate circumstances, in desperately poor countries with little to no opportunity

I don't believe supporting the economic interests of people who are in the 90th-95th percentile of global wealth/income is inherently more important than those in the 96-99th percentile

the evidence that free trade has benefited America overall as well as developing economies is remarkably strong and the virtuousness of free trade is one of the few subjects on which pretty much all economists agree

So "free trade" as in open borders, so that labor is "freed" the same as capital and goods currently are?

 

[-Red-]

We have reach peaked biscuitry brahs...

Sounds pretty similar to Obama's castigation of poor and working-class black parents on Father's Day back in 2008, to be honest.

 

[RustyShackleford]

Sounds pretty similar to Obama's castigation of poor and working-class black parents on Father's Day back in 2008, to be honest.

I don't like Obama's occasional respectability politics either.

But being a black man coming from a black family I understand where it comes from when it comes black folk generally. It is not uncommon for older black people to be mad at systemic injustice but also preach personal responsibility to others in their community. I have got that lecture from family members and dudes on the block plenty of times.

So to me it doesn't come off as a neoliberal politician that is telling minority communities that their suffering in from a lack of moral hygiene. Obama understands and doesn't deny the systemic forces affecting black people, he advocating for things that would make it better.

So sure, I don't like respectability politics generally, scratch that I hate it, but I rate Barack Obama as a overall a good actor. A black dude that is kissing Trump *** constantly doesn't get the same benefit of the doubt from me.

 

[rexanglorum]

Specialization and exchange makes everyone better off, that’s one of the few things all economists agree upon.

The trouble with NAFTA and “trade” deals like that is that they deal with a whole lot more than trade. They use treaty making as a work around to avoid their country’s other, generally more transparent, full domestic law making process. In the US and most countries, treaties have the same affect as laws made in a country’s legislature. It is easier to stick in deregulation, subsidies and extra intellectual property rights, which benefit special interests, during the process of hammering out an international treaty than to pass it through your country’s legislature.

If you care about the working class in wealthy nations, advocate for labor militancy. If you care about the working class in developing nations, also advocate for labor militancy as well as demand that the IMF and world bank prioritize meeting unmet human needs instead of prioritizing Western bond holders and neoliberal “reforms.”

 

[-Red-]

So Rex is invisible now

In fairness, that comment was made before I read the last few pages

 

[RustyShackleford]

I think most politicians are wrong about trade. That goes for Warren, Sanders, both Clintons, all of the Republican Party. They get a few things right, but then their solutions seem inadequate or harebrained. Hell most left wing economist that had opinions from decades ago ended up being wrong. Krugman who wrote a damn textbook on the subject, and who made his name is the pundit class discussing trade, disagreeing with both sides, admits he was wrong about the downside of globalism for American workers. .

Obama seemed to be less wrong than most, but his execution was extremely lacking.

A good trade deal should be mutually beneficial to all countries involved. For its citizens, the benefits will be felt broadly, but the drawback will be felt mainly by a much smaller minority. So all trade deals should have a bailout for the losers, especially the workers, and countries need to have automatic triggers that help disadvantaged and displaced workers. Like a robust wage insurance program. No one ever thinks about the workers that will lose out in a trade deal.

Instead we get a constant string of politicians claiming that if they magic is all about negotiating a better deal where everyone is better off, and there is no loser. I love me some Lizzy, but she had me rolling my eyes on some of her takes on trade.

 

[-Red-]

I don't like Obama's occasional respectability politics either.

But being a black man coming from a black family I understand where it comes from when it comes black folk generally. It is not uncommon for older black people to be mad at systemic injustice but also preach personal responsibility to others in their community. I have got that lecture from family members and dudes on the block plenty of times.

So to me it doesn't come off as a neoliberal politician that is telling minority communities that their suffering in from a lack of moral hygiene. Obama understands and doesn't deny the systemic forces affecting black people, he advocating for things that would make it better.

So sure, I don't like respectability politics generally, but I rate Barack Obama as a overall a good actor. A black dude that is kissing Trump *** constantly doesn't get the same benefit of the doubt from me.

I certainly recognize it as well. That doesn't make it right, though. And it certainly doesn't make it right coming from a presidential candidate—and one who personally shares none of the actual experiences you alluded to because he didn't grow up in a black family or in a black community, but who saw fit to leverage his blackness to **** on people whose actual day-to-day experiences (outside of getting pulled over, perhaps) are about as far from his own as could be imagined.

Anyway, we obviously see Obama very differently, but I was really just talking ****

 

[rexanglorum]

Almost everyone who supported Bernie was working class (not to be confused with everyone, who is working class, supported Bernie). And while it is perilous to project your own experiences and region o to the rest of the US, where I am, the typical Bernie support is a Latina nurse, a Filipina social worker or an Indian-American grad student and they are all working class.

The fact that vaguely racist, retired orthodontists, who own pickup trucks, and live in Michigan and Minnesota flipped from Sanders in 2016, as a protest vote against Hillary, to Biden in 2020 hardly constitute one of “our own.”

Our own are mostly younger precarious workers drowning in student debt, the people very whose plight inspires “no empathy” from Joe Biden.

 

[RustyShackleford]

I certainly recognize it as well. That doesn't make it right, though. And it certainly doesn't make it right coming from a presidential candidate—and one who personally shares none of the actual experiences you alluded to because he didn't grow up in a black family or in a black community, but who saw fit to leverage his blackness to **** on people whose actual day-to-day experiences (outside of getting pulled over, perhaps) are about as far from his own as could be imagined.

Anyway, we obviously see Obama very differently, but I was really just talking ****

I never said it was right. I said I understand where it was coming from.

Obama did face racism as a child, he did have black friends all throughout his life, he married into a black family, lived among black people, he was a community organizer in a black neighborhood. It is not hard to believe that Obama got the same lecture, or was exposed to that rhetoric. Hell you sit in a black church long enough you will hear it eventually. I doubt Obama's experiences with racism were just **** like being pulled over. And I don't believe that rhetoric was coming from a venomous place, wrong is wrong, I am just saying I a considering who the messenger is. It was wrong to say, but I think being flippant about the man's own personal experience with racism is a but much.

Sure I know we see Obama differently, and I respect that. But with all due respect, as a white guy, I don't think you are really in a position speak to Obama's personal blackness and experiences as a black man. Kind crossing a line there with that one my guy.

 

[-Red-]

I never said it was right. I said I understand where it was coming from.

Obama did face racism as a child, he did have black friends all throughout his life, he married into a black family, he was a community organizer in a black neighborhood. It is not hard to believe that Obama got the same lecture of was exposed to that rhetoric. I doubt Obama's experiences with racism were just **** like being pulled over. And I don't believe that rhetoric was coming from a venomous place. It was wrong to say, but I think being flippant about the man's own personal experience with racism is a but much.

Sure I know we see Obama differently, but with all due respect, but as a white guy, I don't think you are really in a position speak to Obama's personal blackness and experiences as a black man. Kind crossing a line there with that one my guy

You are right that Obama was likely exposed to that rhetoric once he lived on the South Side of Chicago. I was pointing out he didn't grow up there or in a place anywhere close to that.

That aside, nothing I pointed out wasn't true. The "day-to-day experiences" (my words) of a black law professor and presidential candidate who lives in one of the poshest neighborhoods in Chicago are about as far from those of an impoverished, unemployed young gang member living on the verge of homelessness in one of the roughest neighborhoods in Chicago (Woodlawn, where he delivered the speech and where I used to work with just this population) as could be imagined—outside of the fact that they're both black and thus are both confronted with racism in a general sense. That was why I included the getting pulled over line—as an acknowledgement that Obama had to deal with racism as well, not as an attempt to encapsulate the entirety of his experiences as a black man. Apologies if that came off differently than I intended.

 

[IATT]