2020 US Elections | Biden certified as President | Dems control Congress
- Thread starter Raoul
- Start date
- Status
Reckon he's got a good chance of becoming the VP nominee in 2020/2024.
ffs no more kennedys clintons bushs
Fixed. I couldn't handle jnr etc
imagine a democratic candidate who didnt talk like this. its possible guys. we dont have to accept the same neoliberal crap that weve been putting up with the last fourty years
imagine thinking this is a good idea, in 2017. when after years of having the aca and in the face of the republican "eat shit and die" plan, the aca is only +4 net favorable. imagine thinking that the way to win elections in 2018 is means testing and spreadsheets and questionnaires on a website that doesnt work only to give you premiums that are quickly becoming unaffordable to most americans. my silver plan with bcbs was set to go up $92 this year on the marketplace, as a young single person with no health issues. most people cannot afford that but i guess someone named kennedy wouldnt have a fecking clue what it means to not be able to afford something.
...
Thats what I thought.
its obvious what my point is, how can you not see it?
You’ve got to be poor to be a proper lefty?
If that's your point then its complete crap.
Apparently so. Anyone from a well known family need not apply.
how about "youve got to be a lefty to be a lefty"
I don’t know what you’re moaning about. The democrats are basically centre these days because the spectrum has shifted so far right. If they actually moved back to the left as far as you want them to they’d scare off a huge number of swing voters.
You either need to learn to be pragmatic or squeeze as much as you can out of your moral victories voting for someone who will never receive enough votes to even be considered a protest party.
Not sure where your getting that from at all. Mainstream american politics for the last the past 10 years has been a fight between far right religious conservatism and the neoliberalism(Centre right).
The democrats are literally the uk conservative party, Obama actually called Theresa May pre election results to congratulate her for beating Labour(A Labour Party who where offering pretty standard social democratic policies)
Last edited:
Not sure where your getting that from at all.
The American political spectrum is far further right than most other countries. When it comes to Business and War, you’ll have trouble separating the mainstream Dems and mainstream Republicans.
Where do you think the Dems are in US politics ?
Id love another Kennedy to run but they are cursed and some double barreled name having cnut would want to make himself famous.
I agree with you(The differences seems to be the number of bombs they drop)but to that means the Dems are very similar to the UK conservative party - centre right. Both Clinton and Obama put forward old republican polices.
Last edited:
They’re the left of the two party system and aside from Business and War, they’re a lot further left than the Republicans (gender, sexuality, equal rights, planned parenthood) but they’re still centre, if not centre right, by most other countries political spectrums.
The point I’m making to Eboue is that while they’re not perfect, they’re a damn site better than the Republicans and a vote that isn’t for the Democrats is as good as a vote for the Republicans.
If I was in the US, I’d be voting to get the Democrats in and then start the fight with them when they’re in power and can actually make a difference if they listen to you.
Moaning at them when they’re not in power and the opposition is destroying the country achieves nothing and only serves to give an even more secure platform for them to stay in power.
They wouldn't though. All politicians think their constituents are more conservative than they actually are. Single payer is supported by 60% of Americans despite there not being a huge campaign for it yet. Left wing policies can win elections in this country. And what have the democrats got to lose? Democrats control 13 state legislatures. They don't control the house or the senate or the presidency. "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule? You are right that very few politicians will satisfy the things I wish to see in them. But in a two party system the way to make changes is to push your party left / right and sometimes that means withholding support and / or criticizing them.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...er-health-coverage-grows-driven-by-democrats/
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/51115737/...-conservative-they-actually-are/#.WjnC_bQ-eRs
Yes, let's vote Jill stein
You have to look at the Dems by US standards, which are obviously to the right of the geopolitical world median. The U.S. is in the process of slowly creeping out of being a center right country (again by U.S. standards) and gradually drifting towards being a slight center left country - as more and more baby boomers die off and more millennials become politically active and Generation Z'ers enter the voting pool. This is why the U.S. is (imo) going to veer significantly to the left in the coming years.
This is true. So how do we move democrats to the left? By supporting every candidate the establishment wants that will continue to support endless war and thousands of dead brown people from drone strikes? I don't think that is a effective and as a personal choice I don't think it is moral for me to vote for someone who would continue the slaughter in the name of american empire.
lets vote for one of those 100 before we vote for kennedy because his last name makes baby boomers wet
But it can work. Kamala Harris came out in support of single payer. She wouldn't have done it if it weren't for the left demanding things of the politicians who seek to win our votes. Politicians will only listen to us when we have something they want (our votes). If we just give it to everyone with a D next to their name without asking questions and insisting on certain policies, we give up our ability to effect change.
for all the talk about how the left / i are inflexible and set too high of standards, the only two that i think are dealbreakers are 1) anyone who supported the iraq war should be drummed out of political life and 2) any democrat running in 2018 needs to be support single payer
Neither of these lofty ideals will result in anything tangible in terms of policy. The Iraq War is ancient history and nobody except the Cenk Uygur's of the world care about who voted how 15 years ago. And as for single payer, even though its the correct policy, you can't expect everyone to support it when there isn't even a national consensus on how to proceed with the ACA.
I can and do expect democrats running for office to support single payer. The way we force them to is to demand that they support single payer.
Predictably, the results of the poll vary wildly based on political affiliation. The hard part for single payer fans will be to sell a new 2.5 trillion program to the public without allowing the conservatives to leverage the fear card to ride back into power. If you thought the war over passing the ACA was bad then the war over single payer will be 10 times worse as it would effectively socialize a large portion of the U.S. economy at a time when the power structure within the U.S. is still run by corporations and wealthy elites at a time without campaign finance caps.
Yeah I think your right there. At the moment I think most millennials favour the guarantees of old american social democracy(The New Deal without the racism) and Nordic social democracy in Europe. Although I think will be interesting to see what happens as I don't think these guarantees will be easy to get at all and in some cases impossible to put forward(Stuff like Keynesianism seems completely unlikely in a globalised world).
and yet we have a self proclaimed Billionaire in office.
Guess what, Politicians arnt' poor, why do you think they are in Politics?
what?
True. Political campaigns do cost a lot of money which is made worse by citizens united and the lack of restrictions on campaign funding by wealthy donors. We are likely to see more money in politics in the future, not less, so I would prefer candidates who happen to have a bit of clout behind them on the Dem side. Once the Dems are in power and the Supreme Court reverse the Citizens United ruling then we can go to the new model. But until then, money can't be avoided.
Not many of those around at the moment...
Few things:
The GOP is blowing up the deficit with their tax cuts. The opposition to the tax cuts isn't coming from the sectors that are traditionally associated with deficit fear-mongering, instead it has mostly been organised by portraying them as an up-to-down class war. The same is true of military spending, increased by GOP, no protest from hawks. It is clear that their opposition is partisan and serves a class purpose (it is only raised when welfare programs that benefit the poor are proposed, not when the deficit is increased in favour of the rich).
Secondly this is a hypothetical counter-mobilisation of conservative voters. It is a bit of a bridge too far to worry about right now.
Thirdly, assuming the worst-case (a 2010-like sweep*). The Republicans have taken ~80 years to try and demolish social security. The point is that a functioning, universal benefit like that is hard to reverse. A midterm loss or 2 will be small change in the larger shift that a universal healthcare system will signal.
*I do not think this will happen, and I think the "authoritarian Obama in league with crony capitalism" versus "grassroots free-market Tea Party" (false) narrative could take hold because of Obama's refusal to crack down on Wall St's disgusting behaviour post-2008, his reluctance to go for the full stimulus that Krugman etc asked for, and his reversal of campaign promises wrt both the mandate and public option.
There's quite a few viable 'lefties' in the party. I like the cut of Tulsi Gabbard's jib for instance. The hard part is besting establishment candidates in the primaries, which can easily be fecked with a la last year.
- Status