Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

but that doesn't make it a good idea to throw in the towel on Biden

I didn't say it did - I'm not electioneering for or against anyone. If you feel compelled to vote for the senile sex pest, go for it. Live your best life, you'll probably be dead before the ocean swallows Florida anyway.

But it's not unreasonable or immoral to decide that it's time to break that pattern.

how?

the Dems existing as a genuine coalition party at this point

where only one faction gets its way every. fucking. time.

Voters had a chance in February-March.

xpost.

I wouldn't lean too hard on the "voters coulda done it in the primaries!!!" given how much of the country didn't get to participate meaningfully in the primary.

not in my fuckin' state xp

yeah THAT

It's also not really relevant to this question.

If the Democratic primary voters - with absolutely no influence from the media or party leadership - rejected a progressive message in favor of mass incarceration and the needs of Citi Bank, that's just a sign that the left's votes need to be held hostage to achieve desired ends. Acting within the system didn't work, might as well try blackmail.

it might be useful to consider how the republican party moved to the far right, over the last 30-40 years, both as an example, and also as a cautionary tale. what you're suggesting sounds like the freedom caucus - which "worked", sort of! for people like mark meadows, i mean. i think the left needs a different path.

What would that path be?

ultimately i think you're right that the left needs to use its leverage, in the form of not automatically falling in line for the latest piece of shit joe biden-esque candidate. but doing it now, in the wake of the sanders/warren loss, just seems unorganized and improvisatory. i won't pretend to know exactly how it would work, but in order to succeed, progressive votes needs to be organized. what are the progressive demands for a vote for biden? who is making those demands? and what are the consequences for biden if he doesn't move further to the left? etc

here's an idea: start the primaries in the states with the largest population, then alternate with the smallest and do that down the line so that we get input from big and small america.

It is unorganized and improvisatory - but it would be in four more years or eight more years or etc..

You can't form the Committee To Not Vote For The Lesser Evil, appoint yourself arbiter of what will get your members to vote and go from there. You have to have enough voters with the fortitude to not do it in the first place and coalesce around that.

Step one is just telling people that it's okay to vote their conscience and that the people who tell them that voting for Gloria La Riva in California was the same as personally anointing Donald Trump President are assholes and liars. If you want to move things along, organize people to vote third party in safe states.

needs a non-embarrassing third party as a prerequisite

The problem is that you're going to have those venal assholes going "you can't do it THIS time" forever and enough people have to learn to shrug them off.

I think a third party organized for a generation-plus starting at the local level with the lowest hanging fruit is a fine idea, but I don't think it's a prerequisite for influencing national elections.

Votes for even an embarrassing third party are still votes that the lesser evil party wants.

You can't form the Committee To Not Vote For The Lesser Evil, appoint yourself arbiter of what will get your members to vote and go from there. You have to have enough voters with the fortitude to not do it in the first place and coalesce around that.

yep, this is exactly what i'm talking about. there are already a ton of voters (bernie) who are along for the ride. what if they decided, collectively, to withhold their votes for biden unless he changed his platform to accommodate the fact that most people under 40 don't agree with him and wants him to move to the left?

what are the best examples of "take the L this time in the hope of improving things in the future"? examples in which that worked and led to better things, i mean

^this

I honestly thought losing to Donald fucking Trump would be that moment but I guess not

I know it sucks to hear this but giant structural change is only gonna happen through years and years of electing progressive candidates and primarying the shitty ones, along with unratfucking our electoral process which has been designed from the ground up to give the 45% power over the rest

xp

that's not exactly a 3rd party, it's more like a parliamentary faction shoehorned into a 2-party system. but at least it would be organized and something that could be planned in advance. like, it's THIS that's the problem:

The problem is that you're going to have those venal assholes going "you can't do it THIS time" forever and enough people have to learn to shrug them off.

exactly! why not go into the election season understanding that this is likely to happen again, and have a plan for how to leverage the 20-35% of the left's vote that is progressive? it already works, to a small degree - bernie's influence was able to make biden lower the medicare age, in his platform, and i'm sure he'll make some incremental improvements in the coming months as well. why not make those demands more explicit and organized?

progressives should be busy selecting their next wave of leadership, right now, imo. as in, who is going to carry the torch in 2024? it better not be fucking bernie sanders. so who is it? the mainstream democrats don't have a base. biden won on super tuesday in a lot of states he barely even visited or campaigned in. on one hand you could look at that in a pessimistic way, like wow, a lot of these people would vote for a can of lard, if they thought it was electable. but seen in another way, it just screams that there's a void of leadership and organization in the party

leftists aren't going to organize within or on behalf of the Democratic party at this point

The left - as in Sanders primary voters - fell right in line in 2016, how would "losing to Donald fucking Trump" prove anything relevant here.

National blackmail and lower level action are complementary, not mutually exclusive.

If it helps you get by to convince yourself that the guy with 1.5 million Iraqi bodies on his souls is a better man than Trump, do you.

neither of them are better than anybody, I'm just saying they're evil in totally different ways. GWB at least had some sort of agenda and a vision of what a US President should be that went beyond total self-glorification. Trump otoh doesn't really seem to have any goal beyond making money and absorbing praise, the man was a registered Democrat up until a few years ago

GWB at least had some sort of agenda and a vision of what a US President should be that went beyond total self-glorification.

Yes, an agenda and vision with 1.5 million bodies on it. I'll take self-glorification 24/7/365.

If norms matter that much to someone... I don't know what to say. I don't think any moral argument would ever get through that shell.

The worst thing Trump did pre-pandemic was play footsie with the ghouls and monsters in the military and 'natsec' world who've had a hard-on for bombing Tehran since 1979.

His ego is probably why Mattis and Bolton and etc. didn't get us into a shooting war with Iran over the last three years.

Sorry, meant to say 'second-worst thing but potentially could have been worst' there

The second-worst thing but potentially could have been worst thing Trump did pre-pandemic was play footsie with the ghouls and monsters in the military and 'natsec' world

it doesn't matter since we're still comparing varieties of burnt plastic here, but you're on more more unstable ground the further you go into the 'trump is not that bad' angle

yep, this is exactly what i'm talking about. there are already a ton of voters (bernie) who are along for the ride. what if they decided, collectively, to withhold their votes for biden unless he changed his platform to accommodate the fact that most people under 40 don't agree with him and wants him to move to the left?

Yes, an agenda and vision with 1.5 million bodies on it. I'll take self-glorification 24/7/365.

again I feel like if 9/11 happened on Trump's watch you'd be dealing with even more deaths than that

I see xyzzz, milo, sic and silby making perfectly good points that Joe Biden has a poor record when it comes to his voting in the Senate. He has frequently said and done things that disqualify him from being regarded as a progressive or even a particularly good human being. His performance in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings was a disgrace. He has backed some truly awful neoliberal policies and done so with enthusiasm. None of this is contestable.

Let's just take it as read that voting for Joe Biden as an act of benediction upon his record or a full-throated endorsement of his excellence as a politician or human being is an impossibility. What keeps this whole discussion alive is an argument about strategy and pragmatics, not morality; it's asking how can we take our increment of power in the form of a vote and a voice and spend it most wisely.

So, stop telling me Joe Biden is awful. Tell me what you're going to do about it that you think might have some net positive effect. Defining the problem over and over, that Joe is bad and you don't like or trust him, is not productive. Sometimes all your choices are bad and you have to choose the least bad. Not just in politics, but in every fucking aspect of living on earth. Constantly asking to be given a better choice when there is no one who can give you a better choice is just denial. I can't make Biden turn into Bernie; no one can, so stop wishing for it. You pays your nickel you makes your choice.

it doesn't matter since we're still comparing varieties of burnt plastic here, but you're on more more unstable ground the further you go into the 'trump is not that bad' angle

I'm not sure how 'Trump could have gotten us into a disastrous war with millions of dead' is 'not that bad'?

We lucked out that his ego - and lack of clear vision - saved us from it. (One problem, of course, is that the ghouls and monsters remain in positions where they can try again in the future.)

again I feel like if 9/11 happened on Trump's watch you'd be dealing with even more deaths than that

That's a pretty useless counterfactual? "Which of these two started a criminal war that killed over a million innocent people" is actually a pretty simple question to answer IMO.

Sometimes all your choices are bad and you have to choose the least bad.

This is... not actually true. That's the point.

You never have to vote for the lesser evil.

...and that might actually be a good move, if you're part of an organized movement of people vowing not voting for the lesser evil unless they get X Y and Z, rather than a part of non-organized movement of millions of disaffected people

not saying that's easy or that the way to do it is obvious! anyone who spent much time with Occupy can understand the difficulties of trying to get progressives to unite behind a common set of demands, or a platform

The left - as in Sanders primary voters - fell right in line in 2016, how would "losing to Donald fucking Trump" prove anything relevant here.

it goes beyond that though. the Dems were gifted the dumbest, most corrupt political opponent in US history and they still could not convince the public that incremental change/"America is already great!" was reason to keep him out of office, and they wound up losing because of narrow margins in states that Bernie won. no matter how awful your opponent is, "at least I'm not that guy!" is not a rock solid campaign strategy and it's infuriating to see them doing the same thing with an even worse candidate having only learned "well maybe we'll go to Wisconsin this time", especially since we're living a moment that should make it 1000% clear why exactly we need semi-competent leadership and the adoption of a few "socialist" policies

It's not a perfect analogy, but look at Virginia with its POS governor. He just signed legislation that at the federal level/equivalent would be impressive. Don't settle for less in the primary. But it's amazing what a legislature and governor of the same party can do if the latter signs whatever promising progressive Bill's handed to him.

Sometimes all your choices are bad and you have to choose the least bad.

This is... not actually true. That's the point.

I cannot imagine how blessed your life must be to have never been in a situation where an obviously good choice was not available to you and all you had to do was proceed from one excellent outcome to the next.

You never have to vote for the lesser evil.

This is true and correct. But you have failed to establish that this is a good choice with a good outcome.

once Trump raises the minimum voting age to 65 in his second term you won't even have to worry about having to make that choice

I cannot imagine how blessed your life must be

Does it burn calories to be so patronizing or is it just for fun?

with all due respect, milo, he's right? You've been at this all day, and I can't fathom any situation in life in which I don't contemplate choosing between two repugnant choices.

Does it burn calories to be so patronizing or is it just for fun?

Are there any mirrors in your home?

So, stop telling me Joe Biden is awful. Tell me what you're going to do about it that you think might have some net positive effect. Defining the problem over and over, that Joe is bad and you don't like or trust him, is not productive.

I agree with this post but also... if this logic were to be followed, <poof> there goes like 75% of ilx and 80% of tha interwb

why does everything have to be productive tho

xp - that's a failure of your imagination, Alfred.

You can gin up whatever mind palace suits you that you were forced to vote for the segregationist bro, the guy who doesn't think abortion is a right, the guy who voted for DOMA, the guy who gave actively helped give us mass incarceration, the student loan crisis and Iraq - but you were never forced to choose it.

A better world is possible - unless you and people like you consign yourself to voting for the Joe Bidens of the world because this time it all hangs in the crux. This is it, the last vote.

We survived Reagan and we survived HW Bush and we survived W Bush and we'll survive Trump - none of them managed to end the world. Voting for the lesser evil at each stop did give us a declining standard of living, forever war and the most imprisoned people in the 'free' world.

gave

A better world is possible - unless you and people like you consign yourself to voting for the Joe Bidens of the world because this time it all hangs in the crux. This is it, the last vote.

I did try. I voted for Warren in the primary. She lost. Now I vote for the alternative.

The lesser evil is simultaneously bad politics and bad for the world. Joe Biden isn't going to do shit about climate change or inequality. In 2024 it will be the same shit. Vice President Klobuchar is our only hope to defeat Tom Cotton, suck it up buttercup!

Until eventually we all need gills to survive.

It's not apocalypse every time. A vote for a Democrat and the most liberal options would be less of a doomsday.

The worst thing Trump did pre-pandemic was play footsie with the ghouls and monsters in the military and 'natsec' world who've had a hard-on for bombing Tehran since 1979.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z),Wednesday, April 15, 2020 2:30 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Milo I have been watching you do your thing and admiring it but this is looking away from...a lot.

Trump sold out the Kurds, has enabled strongmen all over the world, validated and popularized among rogue governments the "fake news" claim that absolves blame for atrocities, enagaged in a headlong effort to undermine every postwar institution meant to forestall war in Europe, cheerled Brexit, emboldened racists and nazis at home, set probably irreversible precedents in refusing to comply with congressionbal subpeonas, has blown threw emoluments laws, established that our system of checks and balances is entirely based on good faith and can be exploited at will, effectively marked the fourth estate not merely as "liberal biased" but ememy of the people, aggressively deregulated environmental and safety standards, stripped ferderal agencies bare in general, enabled a nuclear North Korea, locked children in cages, diverted funds to build a fucking wall, and on and on and on....

He is now personally, directly responsible for what will likely be tens of thousands of American deaths.

The instability that will result from just these four years will no doubt result in countless deaths the world over that can't be tracked back to a single decision as with Iraq. Donald Trump is not opposed to American military adventurism, theft of natural resources, or slaughtering brown people. It's only an accident of self-interest that he hasn't yet started another full-on war.

He is without question the worst president we've had in my lifetime. Likely the worst ever.

This thread makes sense to me:

And this is how Republicans operate. Democrats have to use their leverage in the stimulus to save a basic function of government instead of fighting for better health care or more money going to the states or hospitals. And because Republicans simply don't care, it works.

— Erik Loomis (@ErikLoomis) April 12, 2020

This is also what the left often fails to get when it complains about Democrats. Democrats aren't negotiating with a good faith opposition. Because they care about people staying alive and a basically functioning government and Republicans don't want those things, it's uneven.

— Erik Loomis (@ErikLoomis) April 12, 2020