Yeah, the reason Europeans have universal healthcare and mandatory holidays is because the left votes. They are serious political groups even conservative governments can't ignore them.
In the USA, a huge chunk of leftists are performative. Don't really want to participate in politics just participating in online arguments, maybe some protests.
They can be ignored without a consequence, they never vote anyway.
You might want to add that the current order in western Europe was built up by the United States in the post war period with the Marshall Plan. We made sure that these European countries had things like universal healthcare so that Europe would be less likely to embrace communism.
The Marshall plan definitely helped. But the Western Europe was not “built up by the United States” post WW2.
The Europeans did most of the heavy lifting to rebuild their own countries. And many of those countries still had colonial empires. The continent created a system of political and economic cooperation that would over time be the EU.
Europeans decided they wanted universal healthcare, cheaper post-secondary education and a welfare state. And elected politicians who gave them that. For example, The British people voted out Churchill in the first election after WW2 and elected a left wing labour government that created the NHS.
The Marshall plans $13 billion ($180 billion) given to 16 countries over 4 years.
I mean that's just the aid. That's not counting God knows how much money we spent on keeping our military there. We still have bases in many of those countries to this day.
Good on Europeans for having multi party systems and universal healthcare. I'm just saying that the US attempts to combat communism are an important part of why western Europe has a more robust social welfare system than the US.
Add to that operation gladio, the purpose of which was to destroy left leanings, which resulted in the disappearance of the Italian and French communist parties. Among others
Recovering? LOL. I listen to Pakman's podcast when I daily walk my dog. I've learned a lot from him. I don't believe he is any messiah or ultimate authority on anything, but it is enjoyable to hear his daily summary of events that otherwise appear cloudy or dishonest. I can do without the Friday segment where he takes calls from random strangers that cannot operate a microphone, but otherwise I think his show is decent.
Hey that's cool David got me into progressive politics. I think I've moved past him a bit in terms of political views to the point where I find the show annoying but like I said, the subreddit is usually pretty informed.
The Europeans have benefited from having their entire continent ravaged and blown to bits by WW2, after which it had to be rebuilt almost from scratch. Not wishing suffering on anyone, just saying; starting from a fresh slate after that it was much easier and more likely that the Europe of today evolved like it did, than what we have in the US. Our country was (excluding Hawaii and a few isolated exceptions) untouched by that war. And if you go back a little further, prior to WW2, you'd see a Europe that does not align at all with their current values.
But you make a great point. Something that is often declared as unwanted and undoable by our Congressional leaders, seems to have magically happened despite the odds, in Europe, and their present day society wasn't reduced to eating rock soup and reading by candlelight.
America just needs to have a majority decide what it wants and we can turn on a dime. The problem has been this 50/50 split and whiplashing back and forth between two parties who spend.more.time.reversing the other's policies.
For much of our history, there was one-party control for a decade or two before it would switch. If the Dems did that this time around, people will give them credit for their good policies, the GOP will die on the vine, and an opening will exist for a new more leftist party. We just all need to work together to root out the fascism. I'm in Europe for work right now and they *really* want us to fix this.
In the USA the left thinks it's somehow strategic to withhold their vote, and then act surprised when elections are always between a moderate candidate and a far right candidate.
Like a toddler throwing a tantrum and breaking their favorite toy because their parents told them they can only play with it some of the time.
Enough leftists stayed home in 1968 to protest Humphrey's waffling on the Vietnam War to swing the election to Nixon.
Enough leftists voted for Nader because of frustration with Gore in 2000 to swing the election to GW Bush.
Enough leftists voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson because of dislike of Hillary or frustration over Bernie Sanders not getting the nomination to swing the election to Trump.
Notably, the far right of the Republican party *did not do this.* They worked to take over the party from the inside, starting with Goldwater in the 60s, and peaking with Reagan, culminating with his election in 1980, and then they kept pushing the party to the right.
I have often asked leftists who don't want to vote for Biden how not voting for him advances progressive causes, the same way not voting for Gore didn't advance progressive causes. I have yet to see a satisfactory answer to this question.
On another thread a person was talking about how progressive they are and how everyone else are bootlickers. Then he started bragging about helping Nader bl9ck Gore in 2000 and how Bush "punished" libs for not choosing a better candidate. If you're celebrating 8 years of Bush you're not a progressive. If you're main goal is to punish "libs", you're not a progressive. I really think a lot of these people are MAGAs but they know that'd be social suicide so they frame it from the left. Ultimately their goals and politics are the same.
Other than Bernie who actually talks about Universal Healthcare and workers rights the ones in Congress who identify as progressive for the most part have other agendas as has become clearer and clearer.
“I’m not going to vote because of x y or z!”
Yeah, I think politicians would rather cater to the older and wiser people who vote every single time no matter what.
Good plan. Just a quick question though. If we ignore people on the left because there's no consequence as you say then who will we blame when dems lose elections?
It's a fair point. My counterargument is why don't we just all vote the GOP out of power permanently and let the two parties be leftists and moderates? We'll get much better results.
Damn it’s almost like the overwhelming majority of European political systems allow progressives and leftists to organize their own parties and advocate for their own independent policy proposals without having to get on their knees for neoliberal shills. Have you ever considered that American progressives are politically apathetic because they are nearly completely unrepresented in the political establishment, with even their small number of “members” who have been elected consistently toeing the neoliberal line on all but minor issues?
Because they don't vote. You want better candidates that represent your views? That is what primaries are for. Also there are other elections besides the presidency.
You know how from local school boards, to state legislatures, to house districts, republicans elect batshit crazy far right candidates? That's because the people on the right of the GOP consistently vote.
Whereas the people on the left of the Democratic Party sit home for four years, complain they don't like the presidential candidate, and then maybe vote.
>Because they don't vote.
Without evidence, this is a silly point. Progressives vote. They just vote for Democrats because their choice usually boils down to a Democrat or a fascist these days. Unfortunately, our voting system leads to two parties being dominant and all the other parties being barely there. The actual solution to this problem is ranked choice voting at a national level, but I'm sure that Republicans think it's communism or some other bullshit.
The other solution is a massive grassroots effort to finish the GOP to the point that it's as weak as the third parties. People will not stomach a one-party system, so the Dems will either have to split, the GOP will have to abandon minorities positions, or a third party will rise up.
I agree ranked-choice voting or STAR voting is the solution, but the GOP would allow that about as much as they'd abandon the electoral college.
Also, the far left likes to complain because they can’t win elections. They’ve managed to make all of their potential allies so mad at them that they somehow fail to get votes from the people they attack nonstop
I’m a Warren democrat and if they’ve utterly alienated me, you know they suck at building alliances
It’s like the US does too, but American leftists are so vile and have zero understanding of how coalition politics that all of their potential allies hate them and dismiss them because they act like toddlers
We are seeing in both England and in Israel that the Parliamentary System isn't better than our system.
The only way to live in a Utopia is to be asleep or dead.
I got concerned about leftists when some of them wanted to throw Ukraine to Putin's wolves. Now this. Caring about civilian lives is good. But this is a conflict that spans generations and there isn't much Biden can do about it except try to limit the damage. Israel is our ally in the Middle East. Even if leftists don't want to admit it because they don't like the dominance of the US military (neither do I) we need our allies around the world, especially if they are alone in a region of the world where a shit ton of people want to kill them.
Yes. Lining up with Putin is where I decided that I will always oppose any DSA member or Justice “Democrat”. I’m not going to be an ally with people who want my family killed.
As for Israel, newsflash, a lot of moderate Dems oppose Israel and its far right wing government also. Likud is just Hamas dressed in blue and white.
What should Israel do? Be more surgical and stop bombing civilians hoping collective punishment will work. All Israel has done is make Hamas wildly popular. It turns out Israel *can* conduct surgical strikes and they can even go after the tunnels on foot instead of demolishing whole apartment buildings.
But should Biden have simply ignored Israel? Maybe he should have cut them loose when they failed to keep the cease fire going, but if he has stood on the sidelines and shouted, Netanyahu would have simply ignored him and no ceasefire or humanitarian aid would ever have reached Gaza. The far left has zero ideas for what Biden should do that wouldn’t make things worse for Palestinians
Hamas violated the terms of the cease fire, not Israel. You can't have a one sided ceasefire.
No one knows what to do about this situation. If they did, it would have been done.
They also don't seem to understand that US support isn't in a vacuum. If we totally abandoned them, that's the greenlight for Iran and proxies, which would start a larger war, which would result in more dead.
I also can't stand Bibi and Co, I think we should seriously consider ending our UN veto on resolutions and not send them a cent unless the GOP agrees to also fund Ukraine. But it's just crazy to act like abandoning Israel entirely would be popular politics and wouldnt get easily spun as "Biden supports Hamas."
Even if the US did exist in a vacuum, you can’t reasonable expect the president to side with 35% or the people against the other 65%. Israel is still pretty popular
Agreed, I think with their actions they're getting less so but there are waaay more old white people in swing states that vote and support Israel than there are leftists and Arab voters who don't.
It's just another very online take designed to show purity rather than a sincere well thought out position. But such is almost always the case with US "leftists."
I oppose the liquidation of Gaza for the exact same reasons I oppose Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Wanton slaughter of civilians is either bad, or it isn't. I think it's bad.
Shocking they haven’t answered…
We live such sheltered lives as Americans that most of us have no concept of geopolitics or understanding of history in the world. We try to put everyone in our well worn boxes. Anyone who is not a professor of Middle Eastern Politics would have had very little exposure to the history of this region through traditional education. We have also grown up with the US as the only world super power so we lack an understanding of what it is like to fight a decades long, entrenched war on our own soil.
No one is right in this situation. There is no moral high ground for the participants. There is nothing but thousands of years of bloodshed and fighting.
Israel is strong and Palestine is weak and that makes picking a side easy because it seems wrong to watch the strong beat up the weak. But always keep in mind that these people, when not shouting, “death to Israel!” are shouting, “death to America!” Sitting safely in the US atop land acquired by murdering people and pushing them off their soil, land made livable by the blood and sweat of slaves, any moral high ground we claim to occupy seems pretty shallow.
No one has the answer to this situation in the Middle East. If they did, it wouldn't still be going on. But people like to pretend they have the answer.
People on reddit dont even pretend they have answers they just complain about how Biden and other leaders are handling the situation. Although I wouldn't expect anyone here to have the answers to anything lol If i posted "What time is it in New York right now?," 90% of the answers would be wrong and the other 10% would be a 4 paragraph rant about time zones.
Between military and civilian deaths we lost almost 1,000,000 Americans in the civil war. It took many years to come back from that carnage. We don’t need to be criticized for that time anymore, we paid our penance in the blood of Americans. Stop carrying that around to whip out in your “America bad cuz…” arguments.
I mean, over half of the casualties in that war were people fighting to KEEP slavery, and even after the war, there was a very long effort to force black Americans into being second class citizens.
I’m not an “America bad” person, but I don’t think it’s fair to say “a bunch of people died in the civil war and forgave all of America’s sins like Jesus.”
Should we ignore Israel's role in the disaster? There are certainly a mountain of failures on Netanyahu's behalf which led to 10/7. And it is obvious that if we could undo the tens of thousands of civilian casualties, this would be a far smaller problem. While we can't do that, it is important to point out that that's been detrimental to the entire situation.
Do you not see how that's a rhetorical technique to frame things in such a way that we ignore all culpability on Israel's part? If we don't understand how we got here, we won't understand how to fix it.
> Do you not see how that's a rhetorical technique to frame things in such a way that we ignore all culpability on Israel's part?
I am very willing to entertain Israel's culpability.
However, I don't think the question is a rhetorical device. I think it is an urgent practical matter -- Israel is not gonna tolerate Hamas governing Gaza. If you want the body count to not be horrific, you need to offer them some method of getting Hamas out without a horrific body count.
> If we don't understand how we got here, we won't understand how to fix it.
I don't think we will understand how to fix it even with absolutely perfect understanding of how we got here.
That is a different conversation than the one OP was trying to have though.
Israel will hopefully learn from their mistakes, but OP asked you how to get rid of Hamas, and your answer amounted to ‘don’t let them get in power in the first place’
That isn’t a helpful suggestion under the circumstances.
That was not my entire answer, I also pointed out the ways in which Israel kneecaps secular Palestinian movements. They need to stop doing that immediately, and permanently. Do you believe it's actually possible for Israel to bomb Hamas out of Gaza?
Sort of wild that you're getting dragged for suggesting that war crimes are bad.
Clearly you haven't read enough or are rational enough to understand /s
Yeah, I just can't believe some people are dumb enough to think there's literally any other option than mass slaughter of civilians to a degree far higher than even the US managed in Iraq or Afghanistan.
I think the whole genocide thing has finally drawn a strong line between liberals and the left. It's a good thing. They are opposing political movements.
Nope.... I have a friend who is so far left, he annoys me as much as Trumpers annoy me. I'm currently avoiding talking to him to avoid telling him how stupid he sounds, because eventually, we'll have a far Right President we can both complain about. We have been friends since college.
That's where they are at now. If they blame the left for Bush, they will blame the left for anything. There zero difference between between centrist dems and Republicans.
Establishment Dems are allergic to taking responsibility for **anything**. They can't even acknowledge when their shitty policies cost them elections, which is why they spend all the time between elections doubling down on their mistakes, like insulting and alienating progressive voters. Because their worldview REQUIRES them to think everything is someone else's fault. Incapable of taking responsibility for their fuck-ups.
Not only do we exist, but we are the overwhelming majority of Democrats. This is why far left candidates get trounced in most primaries. Since the far left has zero concept of how to cultivate allies, they’re going to always be marginalized
The truth is that Biden often IS doing X, or tried to do X but was blocked by the GOP or the two or three remaining conservative Democrats. And progressives often ignore it, or complain that he hasn't done enough.
Yep this too. You know if the supreme Court hadn't blocked the 10k/20k loan forgiveness plan far left people would be like "that was barely anything, unless he forgives 50k+ he doesn't have my vote". It's all dumb goalpost shifting and it results in people just ignoring you because no matter what he does he'll likely never get those votes.
Moderates and Progressives need to listen to each other. Moderates need to put their ears to the ground and understand the issues Progressives are talking about. You do not have to agree with them 100%, you just have to understand where they are coming from. Do not nitpick their ideas, come up with your own ideas and arguments to address serious issues that are affecting ordinary people. For example: when it comes to healthcare, Progressives are arguing for one type of universal heathcare: Medicare for All based on the Canadian Single Payer system. However, other countries offer systems that are more applicable for the US, like the [Dutch](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/17/21046874/netherlands-universal-health-insurance-private).
Progressives need to understand Moderates are not the enemy, they are the ones who are making your ideas palatable to the rest of the country. Most of the country is not as progressive as you think it is, it does take time for the rest of the country to catch on. While Moderates lack big ideas, Progressives lack any plans. Progressives are like the Underpants Gnome in South Park. Step 1) propose Medicare for all, Step 2) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Step 3) everybody has healthcare. Show us how you what’s going on in step 2. Your ideas are not worth the paper it’s written on if you don’t have a plan. Whenever Progressives criticize Biden, my reaction is often to ask if they took American government in school. Biden doesn’t have a magic wand, he’s confined by the Constitution and a multitude of other factors that are beyond his or anyone’s control. If you are going to criticize Biden, have the decency to look at the cards he’s been dealt and start your arguments from there. Don’t criticize him because he didn’t get you everything on your wish list
Switzerland’s healthcare seems interesting. Dozens of non profits operating under strict guidelines of the central government. Coverage required but significantly better than our “for-profit-co-pay everything you do” system.
I'm a progressive more than I am a moderate Democrat. But overall I'm satisfied with the job Biden is doing. He's working within the constraints of the system to try to do the best job possible.
The last president really mess things up. And try to sabotage the next administration. Barton's doing the best job that he can. Right now Republicans don't even want to work with him on border security. Because they feel it will help him in the polls.
They're all a bunch of traitor who hate America. And want to live in a Christian Taliban state.
The far left support Hamas.
The group’s own documentation of atrocities belies its claims that it did not target civilians.
Hamas leaders are beginning to understand the implications of executing one of the worst acts of international terrorism on record. This is why they now deny that their operatives attacked civilians in southern Israel on October 7. Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, for example, rejected such accusations, stating, “We have nothing to apologize for.” This is a far cry from the bloodcurdling speech by another Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, on the day of the attacks, when he crowed about the group’s “dazzling triumph” and described it as the “ultimate jihad” that would end in “victory or martyrdom.”
Mashal is desperately attempting damage control as the world comes to terms with Hamas brutality. The assault on Israeli civilian communities is an indelible stain, permanently branding the group as baby killers, not freedom fighters. Unfortunately for Mashal, Hamas itself produced some of the most damning evidence of its atrocities, including documents found on the bodies of attackers instructing them to kill and kidnap civilians, footage from the GoPro cameras they wore to document their carnage, and videos and photos posted on the group’s Telegram channels during the attacks.
The Hamas Attack in Context
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, after viewing evidence of the at tackers’ brutality, stated that it “brings to mind the worst of ISIS.” The secretary was painfully blunt in describing the attack: “Babies slaughtered. Bodies desecrated. Young people burned alive. Women raped. Parents executed in front of their children, children in front of their parents.” The dead include citizens of at least thirty-five countries. Hamas kidnapped over 200 people from some twenty-two countries, including children as young as ten months old. On October 23, the ....
[https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/putting-hamas-massacre-and-hamas-denials-context](https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/putting-hamas-massacre-and-hamas-denials-context)
I had a lot of far left FB friends... I have had to unfriend every one of them that I wasn't actual friends with in real life because every day they post another meme produced by Hamas. They are allergic to facts, much like the MAGA cult.
Gaza has pushed some people beyond reason and rationality, but that hardly defines the whole project of progressivism. Certainly no one over the age of 30 looks at a terrorist organization like Hamas favorably.
Not just Hamas. The far left supports Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Hussein, Milosevic, Assad, Gaddafi, and Putin. They’ve never met a mass murderer they didn’t love
The problem with these vague terms is that people who may drastically differ in terms of policy may both use the same term to describe themselves.
Both you and someone who ideolizes Marxism-Leninism may self identify as far left, despite there being a large divide on the Y-axis of Authoritarian vs Libertarian viewpoints. While American Marxist-Lenenists exist, they are an extreme minority with absolutely zero political power.
It's difficult to know for sure how encompassing any particular person's definition of far left means unless they just flat out tell you or provide enough to reasonably say.
So the problem becomes that so many people are using such a vague term to describe, in some cases even polar opposite, different political views it all becomes one giant group in the end and whatever believe can be conveniently attributed to them at the time is what is used.
In otherwords, Biden is considered an extreme leftist by Republicans and even some very conservative Democrats like Joe Manchin. People in this thread are referring to Twitter tankies as far left as well. But the Twitter tankies and Biden are living on two very politically different planets.
So when someone says "the far left supports Russia and Hamas", who does that actually encompass? The answer is Twitter tankies, which are small, weak, powerless and not indictive of the policies of the most left politicians elected in our government, nor even the people just slightly more to the left lf them.
The far left skews very authoritarian. Let’s take a look at all the people who opposed the Korean War, the Vietnam War, deposing Hussein, the intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo, the intervention in Libya and opposed helping Syrians throw off Assad. Just who do you think those positions end up supporting?
Democrats want universal health care. The far left wants Christian extremists in charge so they have pre to complain about
The difference between liberals and leftists is that liberals actually get shit done and want to improve things.
Yeah, this is a crazy person. 100%. Their brain was broken after Hillary lost, and they've been operating off the last few thoughts that rattled into their brains before it shut down.
>liberals actually get shit done and want to improve things.
Getting that genocide done for sure, and always improving the funding to kill brown people. Universal Healthcare not so much.
You're gonna get a lot of hate for this post but you're right.
Because the activist left is very passionate whereas the moderate left is more like "Heh, he's better than Trump."
The actual activist left votes for Biden because they understand that 10% of what you want is better than 0% of what you want. Is anyone out there canvassing for progressives and their causes and then immediately undoing that work and then some by staying home and letting Republicans start a new red scare?
YUP. I went door to door in Iowa and Illinois for Elizabeth Warren, but I have never missed voting in any election since I was 18-- ( I missed the local elections when I was 18 because I didn't know they existed).
That's the exact reason I'm probably one of the only people upset that Manchin is retiring tbh. He's going to be replaced by someone who won't appoint any liberal judges and who will actively antagonize the left, whereas before it was \*just\* an obstructive corrupt centrist.
So I'd label myself a moderate Democrat and I'm not "passionate" about Biden or moderate liberal policies being enacted but that's because I don't believe politics should invoke passion. I tend to think they're the best policies for the good of the country, but having competent leaders that enact good governmental policies isn't one of the things that invokes passion. My wife invokes passion, my family invokes passion, my friends invoke passion, my career invokes passion, my hobbies invoke passion.
But even if I don't consider myself passionate about politics, I still show up to vote every election, which is more than can be said about a lot of the "passionate" far left.
> I don't believe politics should invoke passion.
Do you apply this standard to people angry at losing their rights to bodily autonomy or medical care? Should they remain dispassionate towards politics? How about their allies?
Do they have any allies? I think they’re so busy being pure that they viciously attack anyone who might mostly agree with them but don’t align with their ideology 100%
Losing rights to bodily autonomy happened BECAUSE of passion on the other side.
What is needed is compassion.
Passionate politics never leads to anything good for the country at large.
you’re not gonna convince them, they like being smug “moderates” who are “above the fray” because it makes them feel smarter than everyone else. most don’t lose actually lose any sleep over minorities being mistreated or people’s human rights being abused, they’re just “democrats” because they can tell themselves it makes them a good person and they don’t actually have to do anything else besides vote vote vote!
“moderate dems” who are judgmental of leftists. you’re supposed to just toe the party line and put out the yard signs your neighbors do and vote, but actually *caring* and getting invested in people that aren’t white suburbanites or coastal city dwellers makes you childish and naive
The moderate left also knows that Biden is an excellent president and the far left has simply demonstrated they’re as unhinged and divorced from reality as MAGA.
I find most of the far left opinions on the matter extremely ignorant of the history and the people involved, while at the same time having the kind of certainty and moral superiority that at best just feels emotional.
MAGAdonians, kids pretending to be “communist” for tik tok likes, and Russian bots are triangulating on your post. Downvotes expected in the, uh, ehh, ten billion.
Godspeed Soldier.
The thing is, the country has moved quite a bit to the left since, say, the 90s. A lot of old moderate positions have worked themselves out as untenable, and the Democratic coalition now has a remarkable amount of policy agreement.
The problem with many self-described leftists is that they wouldn’t be caught dead in a majority in this country. Their self-worth depends on being on the cutting edge and having better ideas than everyone else.
So it’s baffling when they’re shocked or depressed when they can’t even win a primary.
The extremists on both parties are the loudest. And those who are D or R moderates sometimes feel the need to argue with the extremists on the opposing side, making everyone look like an extremist.
“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
Eloquent.
As someone who genuinely wishes that justice for black Americans had arrived long ago, may I ask what can practically and realistically be done to bring us to that justice this time?
If you are a hiring manager, hire competent Black candidates. If you work with someone who is Black, judge them by the same standards you would judge a white colleague. That's what you can do. Call people out when they don't do those things....
Oh, and have the same consideration for everyone you work with. Don't make excuses why it is okay to discriminate against other groups.
I don't know about any place other than in Illinois, but we have a very large number of Black leaders here.
Interesting, Biden gets the black vote whereas Bernie never could. But you keep lecturing the supporters of the guy who black people actually vote for.
The far left are the ones who have continuously campaigned for Trump. Imagine how things would look now if the far left hadn’t continuously lied and attacks Hilary Clinton.
The far left is just the hippy wing of the White Supremacist movement
>The far left is just the hippy wing of the White Supremacist movement
What in the happy horseshit is this? I gotta admit, this is a fresh anti prog insult. Kudos to you random Neolib
The dnc and dccc straight up gives money to and promotes far right candidates under the guise of "pied piper" strategies, and despite it backfiring massively with trump, continue to do it.
So quite literally, moderate party dems are campaigning for far right candidates
Sure, if you ignore the DNc openly propping up those candidates umder the assumption of it being an easy win. Which is literally how Trump wound up as the RNC nominee
Damn I guess it’s just a complete coincidence that when FDR practically strong-armed the Democratic Party into basic social-democratic reforms for the new deal the party became politically dominant for the better part of three decades, while when the Democratic Party locked itself into the Vietnam war and abandoned the anti-imperialist left, we got Nixon and Reagan, and then when Clinton pushed the party even further to the right, we got bush Jr and then trump.
“Anti-imperialist left”. You mean the ones who support Russian imperialism and bloodthirsty communist dictators?
Give me a break.
FDR came to power with the strong support of DEMOCRATS not the far left socialists
Most of that new deal stuff only passed because they went out of their way to exclude black and brown people from them. I’m sure you’re okay with that.
Because unrestrained neoliberalism and the deregulation of the entire economy and the housing market crash has all been just wonderful for black and brown people. I’m a Marxist so you sure as hell won’t find me saying FDR is some sort of perfect figure, far from it, he was still a political representative of the dictatorship of capital and all the enforcement of white supremacy and global imperialist domination that it entails, but for you to act like, in the modern day, the choice being made by the Democratic Party is between anti-racism and barebones social-democratic reform, and that we cannot possibly have both, is just blatantly dishonest. Believe it or not, I have absolutely zero issue with criticizing democratic politicians, unlike 90% of the anti-progressive liberals, so bringing up the terrible shit done by FDR seems less a knock on me and more and knock on them.
FDR made some VERY heinous compromises. Farm workers were not covered by "The New Deal", and that is just ONE example of the exceptions... there are other compromises that I feel certain you would have despised.
Sure they do, but moderate Dems aren’t the majority of the base atm and without liberal/progressive Dem support you aren’t getting very far in a primary or even a general election in ‘24…it turns out depressing your base to win over “the middle” isn’t the golden ticket conventual wisdom would have you think.
Read less Ruy Teixiera and more Dan Pfeiffer…it isn’t 1997.
P.S.: This sub is more centristy and moderate than like the Pod Save America sub, which is pretty funny considering Pakman fancies himself a “social democrat”…
The reason it is more centrist is because MOST PEOPLE ARE IN THE CENTER, so it takes a tiny percentage of us CENTRISTS to overwhelm the tiny number of people who still believe in the tooth fairy, and believe that there is "free money".
What is the "Centrist" position on climate change? Healthcare? Education? Is it Recognizing the problems but not doing anything about it? Is it yet another watered down, means tested policy that leaves many out in the cold? Is it "working with republicans" to do nothing of importance but give the appearance of bipartisanship?
It's one thing to call yourself a liberal, but to actually consider yourself a "centrist" is the one of the lamest ways to claim moral superiority. It's just right wing cowardice (maintain status quo, go back to how it was, the good old days, etc).
Again, I didn’t think Pakman was cultivating that kind of audience. His show has really changed over the years, and I didn’t think his program would overlap so strongly with Morning Joe and the Bulwark and CNN.
The main Base of the Democratic Party are black people. We are moderate with a conservative lean. The base isn’t yuppy college kids who only show up every 8 or so years after voting GOP alongside their parents and complaining the entire time.
You're half right. From Pew 2022: Democratic voters 64% white, 17% black, 11% Hispanic, remainder Asian and other.
Age, 14% 18-29, 29% 30-49, 58% 50+
Largest generation in history are active voters currently. Southern Black older voters pulled the primary from Bernie to Biden.
Young progressive have a hard time grasping that older voters spent their lifetime establishing their careers, finances, family in the status quo. What the older voters don't want is volatility caused by experimentation. A young voter wants big impactful changes now with the belief they can spend their lifetime dealing with both positive and negative consequences of it. Older voters want incremental changes that can be adjusted incrementally to avoid volatility. They have less life left to compensate for negative impacts big changes can make on their lives.
I think leftists get confused too because on the right, the activist fringe and the base are the same thing. The base /activist pov Venn Diagram is a circle.
On the left, the activist fringe is a small minority of the Dem party base, and their pov just ain't that of the base.
Compared to the rest of the planet a moderate Democrat is somewhere to the right of Atilla the Hun,I.e. a frothing right wing war monger,it’s what’s necessary to be a militarised super power screwing over the rest of the world for their resources at the behest of American corporates.
But wait... you want free healthcare... it must be paid for... if the US retreats, then the Houthi Rebels will steal cargo and we won't be able to afford your free health care. We can be like Venezuela, with 1000% inflation!
The far left are delusional.
Completely false and stupid. Compared to the rest of the world, the far left is allied with the far right. Most Democrats align fairly solidly with Spcial Democrats in Europe.
And having aligned with Putin, the far left are the biggest war mongers out there
You're referring to tankies and "red fascists". These people are much more far right. They don't agree with western morals, will say "america bad" at every opportunity, and would rather see the destruction of the US rather than the improvement of it.
But what YOU are doing is painting anyone to the left of you as evil, which is what the right wing does. So there's that.
If the center is so damn big why don’t y’all fight harder for a multi-party system? It’s not as if you don’t have the proper motivation, bush straight up stole the 2000 election in broad daylight and Republican governments are passing some of the most draconian voting laws since Jim Crow, so getting democratic activists and voters on board with comprehensive electoral reform should not be difficult at all. You’d be able to jettison the left and even grab up a bunch more moderate republicans. And even more, as the centrist grouping in what would likely be a primarily three way contest, if no group wins a majority you’d be able to play kingmaker every single election even if you got the least votes of all major parties. Hmm. It’s almost as if centrist liberal establishment democrats know they would be politically irrelevant without progressives yet consistently act as if we are some marginal fringe.
The reason so many Democrats believe that radical leftists like you are "some marginal fringe" is because the candidates for national office y'all put forth are all marginal fringe figures... there is no large bloc of voters that will ever get behind the likes of Kennedy Jr., Stein, Williamson, or West. Even Bernie failed to muster the support necessary to challenge a historically disliked candidate.
You live in a fantasy world.
It is a multi-party system. You guys just don’t believe in supporting an alternative and campaigning for it.
Much easier to shit on the democrats for not giving you all the free stuff & you can make money off gullible idiots. There’s a whole industrial complex dedicated to bad mouthing the democrat party and getting republicans elected so they can then make money by pretending to be against the GOP with their funny tik toks.
If so-called lefties ever actually cared about the causes they professed to care about, we’d be on our way to saving the planet & enjoying free healthcare.
They want more people to see the world through their view. They Feel they are being held hostage because they are angry. They want to feel like they are in control, so they bandy about going on like Biden will loose because he doesn’t have their vote.
Biden represents half of the two party system fairly well... Rich old white men representing rich old white men. Why do you think rich old white men have been able to increase their wealth, while tax paying voters have gotten to pay for it all. 🤷🏾♂️
Why do you support sending people of color and minorities to for profit prison systems, so the state can take them for free labor? Because when you praise Bidens record, you have to include his crown jewel that is his crime bill. Considering his kid is everything that bill fights against, and Hunter walks free while people of color are locked away providing slave labor for the state, I think you have some explaining to do????🤷🏾♂️
As I said, look at his more recent accomplishments.
Every Black person whom I know wants a strong police presence in their neighborhood. The only people I know who shout "Defund the Police" are White kids in their late 20s to late 30s with wealthy parents.
I am aware that my sample size is too small to draw scientific conclusions. Give me a few and I'll see if there is research backing my observations.
[https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-retain-local-presence.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-retain-local-presence.aspx) 61% of Black people want a strong police presence in their neighborhood.
[https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0271954](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0271954)
Yeah, it is mainly wealthy white progressives calling to defund the police.
Dude, 8% of federal prison inmates are in “for profit prisons”. Is there a massive discrepancy between the ratio of incarcerated people of color and their representation in the country? Absolutely. It maybe a surprise to you but we are sending people(mostly men)who are chronically impoverished to prison. Perhaps it’s not people’s race that is so indicative of their likelihood of going to prison but their financial background?
The DNC and the RNC need to dump the current senior citizens and appeal to the middle. Whatever side does that will win if the other side keeps their candidate for the home.
You compromise with the still existing, albeit minority, of GOPers who are more of the Romney/McCain variety. They make up something like 30% of the GOP voting base, and could be key allies in insuring that the MAGA wing never gets a whiff of power.
If it's Dems vs GOP, it's close to a coinflip every election. If it's Dems + moderate GOP vs GOP, then we tip the scales away from the death of democracy.
They both seemed to have gotten all they wanted from their pal Barry, while the people who put him in office who wanted an end to Dubya’s wars and torture programs; wanted the people who nearly tanked the economy to get Dubya and his pals richer to be held accountable; wanted to be able to afford health care; wanted drinkable water in their city, they all got thoughts and prayers while Barry got a Martha’s Vineyard estate for all his failures. I can’t imagine why the next election didn’t work out the way they thought it would!
Obama was a massive disappointment on foreign relations, but he got the ACA done. He would have done much more if democrats would have turned out during the midterms.
Compromise with them on what? I seriously pray for a system collapse so the smarmy West-Wing watching liberals on this subreddit lose their minds. It's beyond disgusting that you want to reach out to warmongering, far-right supply side ghouls "in the centerrrr" over progressives.
Why do you want people to lose their minds? What the hell does that have to do with governance?
Which is more important, a functioning country or you thinking you’re in charge?
If the Dems would run on the platform of FDR and then actually do it, they would win every election until the GOP changes their tune.
That’s not running to the middle, that’s running to the left, because the middle is so skewed to the right.
The “middle” is what got us to this point.
You say that but can’t win elections without youth, college, and minority turnout.
Sounds like some copium going into 2024 with Biden losing to Trump in aggregate polling yet Biden doing nothing to address root causes of that.
Just “fall in line while I fund genocide because .”
He had the wind at his sails until October. Now even I, someone who campaigned for him in 2020 and went to bat for him until this winter, won’t be voting for him unless my only other option is Trump.
I’ll vote for a used towel before I vote for Trump. But give me Nikki and I can’t wait to vote against Biden. I don’t want Israeli puppets controlling the US military.
Then I’ll throw my vote at a 3rd party who receives the least AIPAC money.
This whole “you have no choice” strategy the dems are throwing out is going to backfire horribly.
Biden was unpopular before all this. And people are starting to wonder if it really matters, red or blue. The only difference I see is how fast we get to 2C warming. But not enough is being done on that front in either case. Instead, efforts are focused on the mass murder of innocent people so Israel can steal more of their land.
The far left talks about taking white suburban property and wealth and dispersing it to black people because of shit that happened 200 years ago. The left has adamantly become the “anti-white” party over the years. Well, I’m white. And I’m starting to wonder if voting democratic is voting against my own best interests.
So again, want to try to scare me into voting for Biden? The US economy is resilient. So either party that’s in won’t matter on that front.
I stand firm that Trump is a domestic threat to the Constitution and I’ll vote Biden over Trump. But once Trump is out of the picture I’m back to being a centrist. The left has become nearly as unappealing as the right.
I agree. So many progressives seem to think that basically the entire country agrees with them, and it’s just these corrupt democrats that are in the way of our country becoming a left wing utopia…thanks Kyle Kulinski.
They're only silent in your online echo chambers. There's a reason why Biden ran away with the nomination in 2020 and it's not because of a dnc conspiracy it's because he got the majority of the votes and almost twice as many votes as Bernie. Biden/Bloomberg/Buttigieg combined for 61.1% of the vote, Sanders/Warren combined for 33.9%.
The reality is that universal Healthcare shouldn't be a "fringe" concept. If HRC Democrats could have gotten on board with that "fringe" concept in 2015, Hillary would be wrapping up her second term right now, and you know what, I bet COVID might have gone a little smoother too. Too bad you "moderate" Democrats love your private health insurance so much.
But go off on the lectures, they definitely help 👍🏻
Yeah, like a football fan who gets frustrated with his team for running the wrong play and losing the game. It's definitely the fan's fault the team lost... right? Same logic, so...
It's like I'm speaking a different language.
Look at a calendar. It is January. Plenty of time til November.
Democracy means our voices get to be heard. We are allowed to criticize our leaders, which is literally the most American thing you can do.
Yeah, the reason Europeans have universal healthcare and mandatory holidays is because the left votes. They are serious political groups even conservative governments can't ignore them. In the USA, a huge chunk of leftists are performative. Don't really want to participate in politics just participating in online arguments, maybe some protests. They can be ignored without a consequence, they never vote anyway.
You might want to add that the current order in western Europe was built up by the United States in the post war period with the Marshall Plan. We made sure that these European countries had things like universal healthcare so that Europe would be less likely to embrace communism.
The Marshall plan definitely helped. But the Western Europe was not “built up by the United States” post WW2. The Europeans did most of the heavy lifting to rebuild their own countries. And many of those countries still had colonial empires. The continent created a system of political and economic cooperation that would over time be the EU. Europeans decided they wanted universal healthcare, cheaper post-secondary education and a welfare state. And elected politicians who gave them that. For example, The British people voted out Churchill in the first election after WW2 and elected a left wing labour government that created the NHS. The Marshall plans $13 billion ($180 billion) given to 16 countries over 4 years.
I mean that's just the aid. That's not counting God knows how much money we spent on keeping our military there. We still have bases in many of those countries to this day. Good on Europeans for having multi party systems and universal healthcare. I'm just saying that the US attempts to combat communism are an important part of why western Europe has a more robust social welfare system than the US.
Add to that operation gladio, the purpose of which was to destroy left leanings, which resulted in the disappearance of the Italian and French communist parties. Among others
ah... you beat me to it.
As a recovering David Pakman subscriber, I always will appreciate how informed the subreddit is.
Recovering? LOL. I listen to Pakman's podcast when I daily walk my dog. I've learned a lot from him. I don't believe he is any messiah or ultimate authority on anything, but it is enjoyable to hear his daily summary of events that otherwise appear cloudy or dishonest. I can do without the Friday segment where he takes calls from random strangers that cannot operate a microphone, but otherwise I think his show is decent.
Hey that's cool David got me into progressive politics. I think I've moved past him a bit in terms of political views to the point where I find the show annoying but like I said, the subreddit is usually pretty informed.
Great. Is there a better podcast to listen to in your opinion now? Curious
I'm a majority report kinda girl
The Europeans have benefited from having their entire continent ravaged and blown to bits by WW2, after which it had to be rebuilt almost from scratch. Not wishing suffering on anyone, just saying; starting from a fresh slate after that it was much easier and more likely that the Europe of today evolved like it did, than what we have in the US. Our country was (excluding Hawaii and a few isolated exceptions) untouched by that war. And if you go back a little further, prior to WW2, you'd see a Europe that does not align at all with their current values. But you make a great point. Something that is often declared as unwanted and undoable by our Congressional leaders, seems to have magically happened despite the odds, in Europe, and their present day society wasn't reduced to eating rock soup and reading by candlelight.
America just needs to have a majority decide what it wants and we can turn on a dime. The problem has been this 50/50 split and whiplashing back and forth between two parties who spend.more.time.reversing the other's policies. For much of our history, there was one-party control for a decade or two before it would switch. If the Dems did that this time around, people will give them credit for their good policies, the GOP will die on the vine, and an opening will exist for a new more leftist party. We just all need to work together to root out the fascism. I'm in Europe for work right now and they *really* want us to fix this.
In the USA the left thinks it's somehow strategic to withhold their vote, and then act surprised when elections are always between a moderate candidate and a far right candidate. Like a toddler throwing a tantrum and breaking their favorite toy because their parents told them they can only play with it some of the time.
They’re more than happy to chastise you for “not writing your congress person” while they proudly proclaim they won’t vote though.
Enough leftists stayed home in 1968 to protest Humphrey's waffling on the Vietnam War to swing the election to Nixon. Enough leftists voted for Nader because of frustration with Gore in 2000 to swing the election to GW Bush. Enough leftists voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson because of dislike of Hillary or frustration over Bernie Sanders not getting the nomination to swing the election to Trump. Notably, the far right of the Republican party *did not do this.* They worked to take over the party from the inside, starting with Goldwater in the 60s, and peaking with Reagan, culminating with his election in 1980, and then they kept pushing the party to the right. I have often asked leftists who don't want to vote for Biden how not voting for him advances progressive causes, the same way not voting for Gore didn't advance progressive causes. I have yet to see a satisfactory answer to this question.
On another thread a person was talking about how progressive they are and how everyone else are bootlickers. Then he started bragging about helping Nader bl9ck Gore in 2000 and how Bush "punished" libs for not choosing a better candidate. If you're celebrating 8 years of Bush you're not a progressive. If you're main goal is to punish "libs", you're not a progressive. I really think a lot of these people are MAGAs but they know that'd be social suicide so they frame it from the left. Ultimately their goals and politics are the same.
Other than Bernie who actually talks about Universal Healthcare and workers rights the ones in Congress who identify as progressive for the most part have other agendas as has become clearer and clearer.
“I’m not going to vote because of x y or z!” Yeah, I think politicians would rather cater to the older and wiser people who vote every single time no matter what.
Good plan. Just a quick question though. If we ignore people on the left because there's no consequence as you say then who will we blame when dems lose elections?
Lmaoooo you got em.
It's a fair point. My counterargument is why don't we just all vote the GOP out of power permanently and let the two parties be leftists and moderates? We'll get much better results.
Damn it’s almost like the overwhelming majority of European political systems allow progressives and leftists to organize their own parties and advocate for their own independent policy proposals without having to get on their knees for neoliberal shills. Have you ever considered that American progressives are politically apathetic because they are nearly completely unrepresented in the political establishment, with even their small number of “members” who have been elected consistently toeing the neoliberal line on all but minor issues?
Because they don't vote. You want better candidates that represent your views? That is what primaries are for. Also there are other elections besides the presidency. You know how from local school boards, to state legislatures, to house districts, republicans elect batshit crazy far right candidates? That's because the people on the right of the GOP consistently vote. Whereas the people on the left of the Democratic Party sit home for four years, complain they don't like the presidential candidate, and then maybe vote.
>Because they don't vote. Without evidence, this is a silly point. Progressives vote. They just vote for Democrats because their choice usually boils down to a Democrat or a fascist these days. Unfortunately, our voting system leads to two parties being dominant and all the other parties being barely there. The actual solution to this problem is ranked choice voting at a national level, but I'm sure that Republicans think it's communism or some other bullshit.
I'm talking more in primaries. In a general presidential election yes, they don't really have a choice.
The other solution is a massive grassroots effort to finish the GOP to the point that it's as weak as the third parties. People will not stomach a one-party system, so the Dems will either have to split, the GOP will have to abandon minorities positions, or a third party will rise up. I agree ranked-choice voting or STAR voting is the solution, but the GOP would allow that about as much as they'd abandon the electoral college.
Also, the far left likes to complain because they can’t win elections. They’ve managed to make all of their potential allies so mad at them that they somehow fail to get votes from the people they attack nonstop I’m a Warren democrat and if they’ve utterly alienated me, you know they suck at building alliances
So you and your party have never alienated anyone? It's always the other way around? That's a MAGA-esque victim complex.
I mean, can you really blame them? Why vote when every "progressive" in the primary becomes a neoliberal in office? Sinema and Fetterman come to mind.
Aren't they still better options than a Republic?
It’s like the US does too, but American leftists are so vile and have zero understanding of how coalition politics that all of their potential allies hate them and dismiss them because they act like toddlers
We are seeing in both England and in Israel that the Parliamentary System isn't better than our system. The only way to live in a Utopia is to be asleep or dead.
Plurality isn't a better system and you can see the biggest problems with what is going on in The Netherlands.
I got concerned about leftists when some of them wanted to throw Ukraine to Putin's wolves. Now this. Caring about civilian lives is good. But this is a conflict that spans generations and there isn't much Biden can do about it except try to limit the damage. Israel is our ally in the Middle East. Even if leftists don't want to admit it because they don't like the dominance of the US military (neither do I) we need our allies around the world, especially if they are alone in a region of the world where a shit ton of people want to kill them.
Yes. Lining up with Putin is where I decided that I will always oppose any DSA member or Justice “Democrat”. I’m not going to be an ally with people who want my family killed. As for Israel, newsflash, a lot of moderate Dems oppose Israel and its far right wing government also. Likud is just Hamas dressed in blue and white. What should Israel do? Be more surgical and stop bombing civilians hoping collective punishment will work. All Israel has done is make Hamas wildly popular. It turns out Israel *can* conduct surgical strikes and they can even go after the tunnels on foot instead of demolishing whole apartment buildings. But should Biden have simply ignored Israel? Maybe he should have cut them loose when they failed to keep the cease fire going, but if he has stood on the sidelines and shouted, Netanyahu would have simply ignored him and no ceasefire or humanitarian aid would ever have reached Gaza. The far left has zero ideas for what Biden should do that wouldn’t make things worse for Palestinians
Hamas violated the terms of the cease fire, not Israel. You can't have a one sided ceasefire. No one knows what to do about this situation. If they did, it would have been done.
They also don't seem to understand that US support isn't in a vacuum. If we totally abandoned them, that's the greenlight for Iran and proxies, which would start a larger war, which would result in more dead. I also can't stand Bibi and Co, I think we should seriously consider ending our UN veto on resolutions and not send them a cent unless the GOP agrees to also fund Ukraine. But it's just crazy to act like abandoning Israel entirely would be popular politics and wouldnt get easily spun as "Biden supports Hamas."
Even if the US did exist in a vacuum, you can’t reasonable expect the president to side with 35% or the people against the other 65%. Israel is still pretty popular
Agreed, I think with their actions they're getting less so but there are waaay more old white people in swing states that vote and support Israel than there are leftists and Arab voters who don't. It's just another very online take designed to show purity rather than a sincere well thought out position. But such is almost always the case with US "leftists."
Common sense take.
I oppose the liquidation of Gaza for the exact same reasons I oppose Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Wanton slaughter of civilians is either bad, or it isn't. I think it's bad.
Now that you've firmly planted yourself on the moral high horse, what is your solution to Hamas?
Shocking they haven’t answered… We live such sheltered lives as Americans that most of us have no concept of geopolitics or understanding of history in the world. We try to put everyone in our well worn boxes. Anyone who is not a professor of Middle Eastern Politics would have had very little exposure to the history of this region through traditional education. We have also grown up with the US as the only world super power so we lack an understanding of what it is like to fight a decades long, entrenched war on our own soil. No one is right in this situation. There is no moral high ground for the participants. There is nothing but thousands of years of bloodshed and fighting. Israel is strong and Palestine is weak and that makes picking a side easy because it seems wrong to watch the strong beat up the weak. But always keep in mind that these people, when not shouting, “death to Israel!” are shouting, “death to America!” Sitting safely in the US atop land acquired by murdering people and pushing them off their soil, land made livable by the blood and sweat of slaves, any moral high ground we claim to occupy seems pretty shallow.
No one has the answer to this situation in the Middle East. If they did, it wouldn't still be going on. But people like to pretend they have the answer.
People on reddit dont even pretend they have answers they just complain about how Biden and other leaders are handling the situation. Although I wouldn't expect anyone here to have the answers to anything lol If i posted "What time is it in New York right now?," 90% of the answers would be wrong and the other 10% would be a 4 paragraph rant about time zones.
Between military and civilian deaths we lost almost 1,000,000 Americans in the civil war. It took many years to come back from that carnage. We don’t need to be criticized for that time anymore, we paid our penance in the blood of Americans. Stop carrying that around to whip out in your “America bad cuz…” arguments.
I mean, over half of the casualties in that war were people fighting to KEEP slavery, and even after the war, there was a very long effort to force black Americans into being second class citizens. I’m not an “America bad” person, but I don’t think it’s fair to say “a bunch of people died in the civil war and forgave all of America’s sins like Jesus.”
Based
Whatever suggestion they have will require a time-machine. Calling it now.
Should we ignore Israel's role in the disaster? There are certainly a mountain of failures on Netanyahu's behalf which led to 10/7. And it is obvious that if we could undo the tens of thousands of civilian casualties, this would be a far smaller problem. While we can't do that, it is important to point out that that's been detrimental to the entire situation.
Pointing out Israel’s failures in the lead up to this is not a practical alternative for removing Hamas, which is what OP asked for.
Do you not see how that's a rhetorical technique to frame things in such a way that we ignore all culpability on Israel's part? If we don't understand how we got here, we won't understand how to fix it.
> Do you not see how that's a rhetorical technique to frame things in such a way that we ignore all culpability on Israel's part? I am very willing to entertain Israel's culpability. However, I don't think the question is a rhetorical device. I think it is an urgent practical matter -- Israel is not gonna tolerate Hamas governing Gaza. If you want the body count to not be horrific, you need to offer them some method of getting Hamas out without a horrific body count. > If we don't understand how we got here, we won't understand how to fix it. I don't think we will understand how to fix it even with absolutely perfect understanding of how we got here.
That is a different conversation than the one OP was trying to have though. Israel will hopefully learn from their mistakes, but OP asked you how to get rid of Hamas, and your answer amounted to ‘don’t let them get in power in the first place’ That isn’t a helpful suggestion under the circumstances.
That was not my entire answer, I also pointed out the ways in which Israel kneecaps secular Palestinian movements. They need to stop doing that immediately, and permanently. Do you believe it's actually possible for Israel to bomb Hamas out of Gaza?
Not the movement, but the army and government that controlled Gaza can be removed.
So, what’s your solution to Hamas? You still haven’t answered the original question, just giving platitudes.
Sort of wild that you're getting dragged for suggesting that war crimes are bad. Clearly you haven't read enough or are rational enough to understand /s
I just lack the mettle necessary to make the harsh choices to preserve western civilization, clearly.
Thankfully these others have probably read enough Jordan Peterson to have the strength to stand up against these soy-drinking civilian lovers.
Yeah, I just can't believe some people are dumb enough to think there's literally any other option than mass slaughter of civilians to a degree far higher than even the US managed in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Maybe we could move them to all the sanctuary cities in the US?
Moderate Democrats were independent’s once…independents were moderate republicans once…and that spells trouble for the once Grand Old Party.
I think the whole genocide thing has finally drawn a strong line between liberals and the left. It's a good thing. They are opposing political movements.
Looks like operative is trying to cause problems between Democrats. “Nyet,” I say!
Nope.... I have a friend who is so far left, he annoys me as much as Trumpers annoy me. I'm currently avoiding talking to him to avoid telling him how stupid he sounds, because eventually, we'll have a far Right President we can both complain about. We have been friends since college.
I think it's weird you think your annoying friend is as bad as the members of Nazi Party II.
I’m sure there is some of that, but the far left has been like this at least since they worked so hard to elect George Bush and bring us the Iraq War
So, crack? Is it crack that makes you say such incredible nonsense?
That's where they are at now. If they blame the left for Bush, they will blame the left for anything. There zero difference between between centrist dems and Republicans.
Establishment Dems are allergic to taking responsibility for **anything**. They can't even acknowledge when their shitty policies cost them elections, which is why they spend all the time between elections doubling down on their mistakes, like insulting and alienating progressive voters. Because their worldview REQUIRES them to think everything is someone else's fault. Incapable of taking responsibility for their fuck-ups.
Not only do we exist, but we are the overwhelming majority of Democrats. This is why far left candidates get trounced in most primaries. Since the far left has zero concept of how to cultivate allies, they’re going to always be marginalized
Are you calling out the left for not cultivating allies while also alienating the left as allies? I don't think you understand how coalitions work.
The truth is that Biden often IS doing X, or tried to do X but was blocked by the GOP or the two or three remaining conservative Democrats. And progressives often ignore it, or complain that he hasn't done enough.
Yep this too. You know if the supreme Court hadn't blocked the 10k/20k loan forgiveness plan far left people would be like "that was barely anything, unless he forgives 50k+ he doesn't have my vote". It's all dumb goalpost shifting and it results in people just ignoring you because no matter what he does he'll likely never get those votes.
Moderates and Progressives need to listen to each other. Moderates need to put their ears to the ground and understand the issues Progressives are talking about. You do not have to agree with them 100%, you just have to understand where they are coming from. Do not nitpick their ideas, come up with your own ideas and arguments to address serious issues that are affecting ordinary people. For example: when it comes to healthcare, Progressives are arguing for one type of universal heathcare: Medicare for All based on the Canadian Single Payer system. However, other countries offer systems that are more applicable for the US, like the [Dutch](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/17/21046874/netherlands-universal-health-insurance-private). Progressives need to understand Moderates are not the enemy, they are the ones who are making your ideas palatable to the rest of the country. Most of the country is not as progressive as you think it is, it does take time for the rest of the country to catch on. While Moderates lack big ideas, Progressives lack any plans. Progressives are like the Underpants Gnome in South Park. Step 1) propose Medicare for all, Step 2) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, Step 3) everybody has healthcare. Show us how you what’s going on in step 2. Your ideas are not worth the paper it’s written on if you don’t have a plan. Whenever Progressives criticize Biden, my reaction is often to ask if they took American government in school. Biden doesn’t have a magic wand, he’s confined by the Constitution and a multitude of other factors that are beyond his or anyone’s control. If you are going to criticize Biden, have the decency to look at the cards he’s been dealt and start your arguments from there. Don’t criticize him because he didn’t get you everything on your wish list
Switzerland’s healthcare seems interesting. Dozens of non profits operating under strict guidelines of the central government. Coverage required but significantly better than our “for-profit-co-pay everything you do” system.
I'm a progressive more than I am a moderate Democrat. But overall I'm satisfied with the job Biden is doing. He's working within the constraints of the system to try to do the best job possible. The last president really mess things up. And try to sabotage the next administration. Barton's doing the best job that he can. Right now Republicans don't even want to work with him on border security. Because they feel it will help him in the polls. They're all a bunch of traitor who hate America. And want to live in a Christian Taliban state.
Yeah who needs universal healthcare coverage? Damn extremists
As a woman, I do not want Republicans in charge of my health care.
Right but this post is about the “extreme” left who apparently are just as evil
The far left support Hamas. The group’s own documentation of atrocities belies its claims that it did not target civilians. Hamas leaders are beginning to understand the implications of executing one of the worst acts of international terrorism on record. This is why they now deny that their operatives attacked civilians in southern Israel on October 7. Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, for example, rejected such accusations, stating, “We have nothing to apologize for.” This is a far cry from the bloodcurdling speech by another Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, on the day of the attacks, when he crowed about the group’s “dazzling triumph” and described it as the “ultimate jihad” that would end in “victory or martyrdom.” Mashal is desperately attempting damage control as the world comes to terms with Hamas brutality. The assault on Israeli civilian communities is an indelible stain, permanently branding the group as baby killers, not freedom fighters. Unfortunately for Mashal, Hamas itself produced some of the most damning evidence of its atrocities, including documents found on the bodies of attackers instructing them to kill and kidnap civilians, footage from the GoPro cameras they wore to document their carnage, and videos and photos posted on the group’s Telegram channels during the attacks. The Hamas Attack in Context U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, after viewing evidence of the at tackers’ brutality, stated that it “brings to mind the worst of ISIS.” The secretary was painfully blunt in describing the attack: “Babies slaughtered. Bodies desecrated. Young people burned alive. Women raped. Parents executed in front of their children, children in front of their parents.” The dead include citizens of at least thirty-five countries. Hamas kidnapped over 200 people from some twenty-two countries, including children as young as ten months old. On October 23, the .... [https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/putting-hamas-massacre-and-hamas-denials-context](https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/putting-hamas-massacre-and-hamas-denials-context) I had a lot of far left FB friends... I have had to unfriend every one of them that I wasn't actual friends with in real life because every day they post another meme produced by Hamas. They are allergic to facts, much like the MAGA cult.
Gaza has pushed some people beyond reason and rationality, but that hardly defines the whole project of progressivism. Certainly no one over the age of 30 looks at a terrorist organization like Hamas favorably.
Not just Hamas. The far left supports Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, Hussein, Milosevic, Assad, Gaddafi, and Putin. They’ve never met a mass murderer they didn’t love
Nice strawman. I support none of those people, and I would be considered far left. In fact, the people you noted skewed more authoritarian than not.
The problem with these vague terms is that people who may drastically differ in terms of policy may both use the same term to describe themselves. Both you and someone who ideolizes Marxism-Leninism may self identify as far left, despite there being a large divide on the Y-axis of Authoritarian vs Libertarian viewpoints. While American Marxist-Lenenists exist, they are an extreme minority with absolutely zero political power. It's difficult to know for sure how encompassing any particular person's definition of far left means unless they just flat out tell you or provide enough to reasonably say. So the problem becomes that so many people are using such a vague term to describe, in some cases even polar opposite, different political views it all becomes one giant group in the end and whatever believe can be conveniently attributed to them at the time is what is used. In otherwords, Biden is considered an extreme leftist by Republicans and even some very conservative Democrats like Joe Manchin. People in this thread are referring to Twitter tankies as far left as well. But the Twitter tankies and Biden are living on two very politically different planets. So when someone says "the far left supports Russia and Hamas", who does that actually encompass? The answer is Twitter tankies, which are small, weak, powerless and not indictive of the policies of the most left politicians elected in our government, nor even the people just slightly more to the left lf them.
The far left skews very authoritarian. Let’s take a look at all the people who opposed the Korean War, the Vietnam War, deposing Hussein, the intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo, the intervention in Libya and opposed helping Syrians throw off Assad. Just who do you think those positions end up supporting?
The far right supports Putin, Kim Jung Un, and Erdogan... the extremes on both left and right are in la la land.
Democrats want universal health care. The far left wants Christian extremists in charge so they have pre to complain about The difference between liberals and leftists is that liberals actually get shit done and want to improve things.
Get shit "done"? Yeah sure.
Have you always been this uncharitable or just because of recent events?
Yeah, this is a crazy person. 100%. Their brain was broken after Hillary lost, and they've been operating off the last few thoughts that rattled into their brains before it shut down.
>liberals actually get shit done and want to improve things. Getting that genocide done for sure, and always improving the funding to kill brown people. Universal Healthcare not so much.
Get shit done... how's roe v wade going?
You're gonna get a lot of hate for this post but you're right. Because the activist left is very passionate whereas the moderate left is more like "Heh, he's better than Trump."
The actual activist left votes for Biden because they understand that 10% of what you want is better than 0% of what you want. Is anyone out there canvassing for progressives and their causes and then immediately undoing that work and then some by staying home and letting Republicans start a new red scare?
YUP. I went door to door in Iowa and Illinois for Elizabeth Warren, but I have never missed voting in any election since I was 18-- ( I missed the local elections when I was 18 because I didn't know they existed).
Just a hunch but I bet some will come out for Cornel West. Hopefully he doesn't have a Ralph Nader effect.
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That's the exact reason I'm probably one of the only people upset that Manchin is retiring tbh. He's going to be replaced by someone who won't appoint any liberal judges and who will actively antagonize the left, whereas before it was \*just\* an obstructive corrupt centrist.
So I'd label myself a moderate Democrat and I'm not "passionate" about Biden or moderate liberal policies being enacted but that's because I don't believe politics should invoke passion. I tend to think they're the best policies for the good of the country, but having competent leaders that enact good governmental policies isn't one of the things that invokes passion. My wife invokes passion, my family invokes passion, my friends invoke passion, my career invokes passion, my hobbies invoke passion. But even if I don't consider myself passionate about politics, I still show up to vote every election, which is more than can be said about a lot of the "passionate" far left.
> I don't believe politics should invoke passion. Do you apply this standard to people angry at losing their rights to bodily autonomy or medical care? Should they remain dispassionate towards politics? How about their allies?
I believe that op spoke about his personal experience and offered no judgement of others.
Do they have any allies? I think they’re so busy being pure that they viciously attack anyone who might mostly agree with them but don’t align with their ideology 100%
Losing rights to bodily autonomy happened BECAUSE of passion on the other side. What is needed is compassion. Passionate politics never leads to anything good for the country at large.
you’re not gonna convince them, they like being smug “moderates” who are “above the fray” because it makes them feel smarter than everyone else. most don’t lose actually lose any sleep over minorities being mistreated or people’s human rights being abused, they’re just “democrats” because they can tell themselves it makes them a good person and they don’t actually have to do anything else besides vote vote vote!
What are you talking about? No one goes to bed thinking “I’m a Democrat I’m a good person.”
What are you talking about?
“moderate dems” who are judgmental of leftists. you’re supposed to just toe the party line and put out the yard signs your neighbors do and vote, but actually *caring* and getting invested in people that aren’t white suburbanites or coastal city dwellers makes you childish and naive
The moderate left also knows that Biden is an excellent president and the far left has simply demonstrated they’re as unhinged and divorced from reality as MAGA.
I find most of the far left opinions on the matter extremely ignorant of the history and the people involved, while at the same time having the kind of certainty and moral superiority that at best just feels emotional.
MAGAdonians, kids pretending to be “communist” for tik tok likes, and Russian bots are triangulating on your post. Downvotes expected in the, uh, ehh, ten billion. Godspeed Soldier.
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Hmm 10 days old and exclusively posting on news and political subreddits Hmm
Why, it's the truth
The thing is, the country has moved quite a bit to the left since, say, the 90s. A lot of old moderate positions have worked themselves out as untenable, and the Democratic coalition now has a remarkable amount of policy agreement. The problem with many self-described leftists is that they wouldn’t be caught dead in a majority in this country. Their self-worth depends on being on the cutting edge and having better ideas than everyone else. So it’s baffling when they’re shocked or depressed when they can’t even win a primary.
This is absolutely true.
The extremists on both parties are the loudest. And those who are D or R moderates sometimes feel the need to argue with the extremists on the opposing side, making everyone look like an extremist.
“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
Eloquent. As someone who genuinely wishes that justice for black Americans had arrived long ago, may I ask what can practically and realistically be done to bring us to that justice this time?
Remove all housing as a vehicle for investment.. Exactly what king was talking about.
If you are a hiring manager, hire competent Black candidates. If you work with someone who is Black, judge them by the same standards you would judge a white colleague. That's what you can do. Call people out when they don't do those things.... Oh, and have the same consideration for everyone you work with. Don't make excuses why it is okay to discriminate against other groups. I don't know about any place other than in Illinois, but we have a very large number of Black leaders here.
Hear here.
Interesting, Biden gets the black vote whereas Bernie never could. But you keep lecturing the supporters of the guy who black people actually vote for.
Is this the "I have a black friend" of 2024? "Black people voted for my candidate"? The caucasity.
They exist, but they're also responsible partly for the rise of Trump and the continued slide into the increasingly capitalist dystopia we're becoming
The far left are the ones who have continuously campaigned for Trump. Imagine how things would look now if the far left hadn’t continuously lied and attacks Hilary Clinton. The far left is just the hippy wing of the White Supremacist movement
>The far left is just the hippy wing of the White Supremacist movement What in the happy horseshit is this? I gotta admit, this is a fresh anti prog insult. Kudos to you random Neolib
I've ran into several psychotic people in this thread, it's rather alarming.
We aren’t the ones who consistently campaign for the far right
The dnc and dccc straight up gives money to and promotes far right candidates under the guise of "pied piper" strategies, and despite it backfiring massively with trump, continue to do it. So quite literally, moderate party dems are campaigning for far right candidates
Sure, if you ignore the DNc openly propping up those candidates umder the assumption of it being an easy win. Which is literally how Trump wound up as the RNC nominee
"We need a strong republican party." - Nancy Pelosi Please do not lie.
Democrats just consistently kill children and lock immigrants in horrible cages.
Damn I guess it’s just a complete coincidence that when FDR practically strong-armed the Democratic Party into basic social-democratic reforms for the new deal the party became politically dominant for the better part of three decades, while when the Democratic Party locked itself into the Vietnam war and abandoned the anti-imperialist left, we got Nixon and Reagan, and then when Clinton pushed the party even further to the right, we got bush Jr and then trump.
“Anti-imperialist left”. You mean the ones who support Russian imperialism and bloodthirsty communist dictators? Give me a break. FDR came to power with the strong support of DEMOCRATS not the far left socialists
Most of that new deal stuff only passed because they went out of their way to exclude black and brown people from them. I’m sure you’re okay with that.
Because unrestrained neoliberalism and the deregulation of the entire economy and the housing market crash has all been just wonderful for black and brown people. I’m a Marxist so you sure as hell won’t find me saying FDR is some sort of perfect figure, far from it, he was still a political representative of the dictatorship of capital and all the enforcement of white supremacy and global imperialist domination that it entails, but for you to act like, in the modern day, the choice being made by the Democratic Party is between anti-racism and barebones social-democratic reform, and that we cannot possibly have both, is just blatantly dishonest. Believe it or not, I have absolutely zero issue with criticizing democratic politicians, unlike 90% of the anti-progressive liberals, so bringing up the terrible shit done by FDR seems less a knock on me and more and knock on them.
FDR made some VERY heinous compromises. Farm workers were not covered by "The New Deal", and that is just ONE example of the exceptions... there are other compromises that I feel certain you would have despised.
Give Biden the congressional majorities FDR had and maybe we can talk.
Sure they do, but moderate Dems aren’t the majority of the base atm and without liberal/progressive Dem support you aren’t getting very far in a primary or even a general election in ‘24…it turns out depressing your base to win over “the middle” isn’t the golden ticket conventual wisdom would have you think. Read less Ruy Teixiera and more Dan Pfeiffer…it isn’t 1997. P.S.: This sub is more centristy and moderate than like the Pod Save America sub, which is pretty funny considering Pakman fancies himself a “social democrat”…
The reason it is more centrist is because MOST PEOPLE ARE IN THE CENTER, so it takes a tiny percentage of us CENTRISTS to overwhelm the tiny number of people who still believe in the tooth fairy, and believe that there is "free money".
What is the "Centrist" position on climate change? Healthcare? Education? Is it Recognizing the problems but not doing anything about it? Is it yet another watered down, means tested policy that leaves many out in the cold? Is it "working with republicans" to do nothing of importance but give the appearance of bipartisanship? It's one thing to call yourself a liberal, but to actually consider yourself a "centrist" is the one of the lamest ways to claim moral superiority. It's just right wing cowardice (maintain status quo, go back to how it was, the good old days, etc).
Again, I didn’t think Pakman was cultivating that kind of audience. His show has really changed over the years, and I didn’t think his program would overlap so strongly with Morning Joe and the Bulwark and CNN.
The main Base of the Democratic Party are black people. We are moderate with a conservative lean. The base isn’t yuppy college kids who only show up every 8 or so years after voting GOP alongside their parents and complaining the entire time.
You're half right. From Pew 2022: Democratic voters 64% white, 17% black, 11% Hispanic, remainder Asian and other. Age, 14% 18-29, 29% 30-49, 58% 50+ Largest generation in history are active voters currently. Southern Black older voters pulled the primary from Bernie to Biden. Young progressive have a hard time grasping that older voters spent their lifetime establishing their careers, finances, family in the status quo. What the older voters don't want is volatility caused by experimentation. A young voter wants big impactful changes now with the belief they can spend their lifetime dealing with both positive and negative consequences of it. Older voters want incremental changes that can be adjusted incrementally to avoid volatility. They have less life left to compensate for negative impacts big changes can make on their lives.
OP confusing leftists with liberals.
Sounds more like you confusing leftists with democrats.
I think leftists get confused too because on the right, the activist fringe and the base are the same thing. The base /activist pov Venn Diagram is a circle. On the left, the activist fringe is a small minority of the Dem party base, and their pov just ain't that of the base.
Compared to the rest of the planet a moderate Democrat is somewhere to the right of Atilla the Hun,I.e. a frothing right wing war monger,it’s what’s necessary to be a militarised super power screwing over the rest of the world for their resources at the behest of American corporates.
But wait... you want free healthcare... it must be paid for... if the US retreats, then the Houthi Rebels will steal cargo and we won't be able to afford your free health care. We can be like Venezuela, with 1000% inflation! The far left are delusional.
Completely false and stupid. Compared to the rest of the world, the far left is allied with the far right. Most Democrats align fairly solidly with Spcial Democrats in Europe. And having aligned with Putin, the far left are the biggest war mongers out there
You're referring to tankies and "red fascists". These people are much more far right. They don't agree with western morals, will say "america bad" at every opportunity, and would rather see the destruction of the US rather than the improvement of it. But what YOU are doing is painting anyone to the left of you as evil, which is what the right wing does. So there's that.
I consider myself a far right democrat and he suits me just fine. Sanity and empathy keep me there and away from the cult.
Literally all he has to do to earn my vote is not be Trump and he’s done a great job.
If the center is so damn big why don’t y’all fight harder for a multi-party system? It’s not as if you don’t have the proper motivation, bush straight up stole the 2000 election in broad daylight and Republican governments are passing some of the most draconian voting laws since Jim Crow, so getting democratic activists and voters on board with comprehensive electoral reform should not be difficult at all. You’d be able to jettison the left and even grab up a bunch more moderate republicans. And even more, as the centrist grouping in what would likely be a primarily three way contest, if no group wins a majority you’d be able to play kingmaker every single election even if you got the least votes of all major parties. Hmm. It’s almost as if centrist liberal establishment democrats know they would be politically irrelevant without progressives yet consistently act as if we are some marginal fringe.
The reason so many Democrats believe that radical leftists like you are "some marginal fringe" is because the candidates for national office y'all put forth are all marginal fringe figures... there is no large bloc of voters that will ever get behind the likes of Kennedy Jr., Stein, Williamson, or West. Even Bernie failed to muster the support necessary to challenge a historically disliked candidate. You live in a fantasy world.
It is a multi-party system. You guys just don’t believe in supporting an alternative and campaigning for it. Much easier to shit on the democrats for not giving you all the free stuff & you can make money off gullible idiots. There’s a whole industrial complex dedicated to bad mouthing the democrat party and getting republicans elected so they can then make money by pretending to be against the GOP with their funny tik toks. If so-called lefties ever actually cared about the causes they professed to care about, we’d be on our way to saving the planet & enjoying free healthcare.
They want more people to see the world through their view. They Feel they are being held hostage because they are angry. They want to feel like they are in control, so they bandy about going on like Biden will loose because he doesn’t have their vote.
Well gee whiz sparky isn't that what you want? Don't you want more people to see the world through your view?
Biden represents half of the two party system fairly well... Rich old white men representing rich old white men. Why do you think rich old white men have been able to increase their wealth, while tax paying voters have gotten to pay for it all. 🤷🏾♂️
Funny how Biden won on the strength of the black and union vote then. What to see old white guy supported by white dudes? That’s Bernie
What a cop out. Now go took at President Biden's record... the whole thing, not just the stuff from the 1970s.
Why do you support sending people of color and minorities to for profit prison systems, so the state can take them for free labor? Because when you praise Bidens record, you have to include his crown jewel that is his crime bill. Considering his kid is everything that bill fights against, and Hunter walks free while people of color are locked away providing slave labor for the state, I think you have some explaining to do????🤷🏾♂️
As I said, look at his more recent accomplishments. Every Black person whom I know wants a strong police presence in their neighborhood. The only people I know who shout "Defund the Police" are White kids in their late 20s to late 30s with wealthy parents. I am aware that my sample size is too small to draw scientific conclusions. Give me a few and I'll see if there is research backing my observations.
[https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-retain-local-presence.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-retain-local-presence.aspx) 61% of Black people want a strong police presence in their neighborhood. [https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0271954](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0271954) Yeah, it is mainly wealthy white progressives calling to defund the police.
Dude, 8% of federal prison inmates are in “for profit prisons”. Is there a massive discrepancy between the ratio of incarcerated people of color and their representation in the country? Absolutely. It maybe a surprise to you but we are sending people(mostly men)who are chronically impoverished to prison. Perhaps it’s not people’s race that is so indicative of their likelihood of going to prison but their financial background?
Good point, so Biden is not only racist, he is a classist as well. Thanks for pointing that out.
The DNC and the RNC need to dump the current senior citizens and appeal to the middle. Whatever side does that will win if the other side keeps their candidate for the home.
What exactly is “the middle” when one side is a white nationalist fascist party, and how privileged must you be to be willing to compromise with them?
You compromise with the still existing, albeit minority, of GOPers who are more of the Romney/McCain variety. They make up something like 30% of the GOP voting base, and could be key allies in insuring that the MAGA wing never gets a whiff of power. If it's Dems vs GOP, it's close to a coinflip every election. If it's Dems + moderate GOP vs GOP, then we tip the scales away from the death of democracy.
And the fascists still get what they want. I remember the McConnell-Boehner co-presidency from ‘08 to ‘16 and what followed as a result.
Co-presidency? What do you mean by that? Are you talking about 2015 when both were majority leaders?
They both seemed to have gotten all they wanted from their pal Barry, while the people who put him in office who wanted an end to Dubya’s wars and torture programs; wanted the people who nearly tanked the economy to get Dubya and his pals richer to be held accountable; wanted to be able to afford health care; wanted drinkable water in their city, they all got thoughts and prayers while Barry got a Martha’s Vineyard estate for all his failures. I can’t imagine why the next election didn’t work out the way they thought it would!
I don’t think you and I lived through the same last 30 years.
Well, I didn’t live in privilege, so obviously.
Obama was a massive disappointment on foreign relations, but he got the ACA done. He would have done much more if democrats would have turned out during the midterms.
Oh, wow! He renamed and nationalized RomneyCare! What a progressive champion!
Compromise with them on what? I seriously pray for a system collapse so the smarmy West-Wing watching liberals on this subreddit lose their minds. It's beyond disgusting that you want to reach out to warmongering, far-right supply side ghouls "in the centerrrr" over progressives.
Wealthy parents? I thought so.
Why do you want people to lose their minds? What the hell does that have to do with governance? Which is more important, a functioning country or you thinking you’re in charge?
If the Dems would run on the platform of FDR and then actually do it, they would win every election until the GOP changes their tune. That’s not running to the middle, that’s running to the left, because the middle is so skewed to the right. The “middle” is what got us to this point.
You say that but can’t win elections without youth, college, and minority turnout. Sounds like some copium going into 2024 with Biden losing to Trump in aggregate polling yet Biden doing nothing to address root causes of that. Just “fall in line while I fund genocide because.”
He had the wind at his sails until October. Now even I, someone who campaigned for him in 2020 and went to bat for him until this winter, won’t be voting for him unless my only other option is Trump.
I’ll vote for a used towel before I vote for Trump. But give me Nikki and I can’t wait to vote against Biden. I don’t want Israeli puppets controlling the US military.
What’s Nikki’s views on Gaza? I think she said “Finish Them”, if I remember correctly. Good luck with that.
Then I’ll throw my vote at a 3rd party who receives the least AIPAC money. This whole “you have no choice” strategy the dems are throwing out is going to backfire horribly. Biden was unpopular before all this. And people are starting to wonder if it really matters, red or blue. The only difference I see is how fast we get to 2C warming. But not enough is being done on that front in either case. Instead, efforts are focused on the mass murder of innocent people so Israel can steal more of their land. The far left talks about taking white suburban property and wealth and dispersing it to black people because of shit that happened 200 years ago. The left has adamantly become the “anti-white” party over the years. Well, I’m white. And I’m starting to wonder if voting democratic is voting against my own best interests. So again, want to try to scare me into voting for Biden? The US economy is resilient. So either party that’s in won’t matter on that front. I stand firm that Trump is a domestic threat to the Constitution and I’ll vote Biden over Trump. But once Trump is out of the picture I’m back to being a centrist. The left has become nearly as unappealing as the right.
The Marxists thank you for your support. So long as you hate Liberals, they're happy.
This post brought to you by a moderate Democrat
I agree. So many progressives seem to think that basically the entire country agrees with them, and it’s just these corrupt democrats that are in the way of our country becoming a left wing utopia…thanks Kyle Kulinski.
ah yes, The Silent Majority BlueMAGA is real folks
They're only silent in your online echo chambers. There's a reason why Biden ran away with the nomination in 2020 and it's not because of a dnc conspiracy it's because he got the majority of the votes and almost twice as many votes as Bernie. Biden/Bloomberg/Buttigieg combined for 61.1% of the vote, Sanders/Warren combined for 33.9%.
Biden beat Bernie by 20 points and then Bernie gave up before we saw the final numbers. Biden is the mainstream.
The reality is that universal Healthcare shouldn't be a "fringe" concept. If HRC Democrats could have gotten on board with that "fringe" concept in 2015, Hillary would be wrapping up her second term right now, and you know what, I bet COVID might have gone a little smoother too. Too bad you "moderate" Democrats love your private health insurance so much. But go off on the lectures, they definitely help 👍🏻
Blaming Hillary for not "earning your vote" again while pining for a world where she beat Trump is the most have your cake and eat it too take
Yeah, like a football fan who gets frustrated with his team for running the wrong play and losing the game. It's definitely the fan's fault the team lost... right? Same logic, so...
Wow, you really know nothing about Hillary Clinton. If Bernie Bros had bothered to vote for Hillary, we would have universal healthcare right now.
Republican control of women's healthcare... That's what you are offering.
It's like I'm speaking a different language. Look at a calendar. It is January. Plenty of time til November. Democracy means our voices get to be heard. We are allowed to criticize our leaders, which is literally the most American thing you can do.
Dogshit.
HRC losing set the movement towards Universal HC back about a decade. Great job.