Republican Bidens and the Failure of the Democratic Party

[Gori the Grey]

should have their criticism listened to

I do try to listen.* I went and read the platform of the socialist candidate Lex plans to support. I know how dire the situation is for transgendered people from the posters here. I don't know when I've finger-wagged. The reasons of people who can't vote for Biden are valid in my eyes. For all that, I still want them to vote against Trump, as being even worse. The LOD/S characterization of R v D voters rings true to me. I think you can observe a mentality in operation without that meaning your blaming anyone. Frankly, all that makes me want to do is say "Ok, if this is how Ds tend to approach elections, what's the right appeal right now that could get them to vote against Trump?"

You, and schlaufuchs, aren't wrong. Results are the only thing that really matter in the end. No slogan, no framing, no approach will matter if results don't follow, and certain formulations are worse than nothing, e.g. I've got your back.

*though it's clear my listening skills need work!

 

[Gorbles]

The LOD/S characterization of R v D voters rings true to me. I think you can observe a mentality in operation without that meaning your blaming anyone. Frankly, all that makes me want to do is say "Ok, if this is how Ds tend to approach elections, what's the right appeal right now that could get them to vote against Trump?"

The thing is, I don't think it's true, not just because of the things I've already said (no one single issue all of the time, etc), because there are people that can and will vote Democrat because they're always going to. Party voters existing is probably one of the few truly bipartisan things in US politics. That said, this was an analysis that when it said "Democrat voter" actually meant "progressive", and (or) that's exactly how Sommer framed it. I'm not saying that's how you framed it, but observation vs. blame is a very fine line to split in a system most participants are directly involved with (when it's not clearly explicit).

But at least I've laboured the point, I don't need to bang on about it further. You listening or not listening isn't why I started posting in-thread, after all (not meant as a slight).

 

[Zardnaar]

Right, the Democrats ignored multiple 'warning shots.' Obama jumped the line in 2008: At the 2004 Democratic Convention, the party was all but anointing him their candidate in 2016. Hilary Clinton was supposed to be next. The party establishment tried to push her on us for over a decade, and she could only win a primary that was stacked in her favor. (Can anyone name another 2016 Democratic Primary candidate besides Bernie Sanders without Googling it? I can't. )


I pretty much agree, yeah. And it would be even worse if the Republicans had a 'firebrand', nationalist, reactionary, authoritarian candidate who wasn't a complete boob. I remember during the 2016 campaign, a conservative analyst said, "Somehow, both parties have nominated a candidate the other party can't lose to." There's history rhyming, again. I remember thinking in 2016 how unfortunate it was that the Democratic Party had super-delegates and the Republicans didn't. We were getting one establishment candidate and one insurgent, but they were the wrong ones. I can't claim with certainty that Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio would have won the nomination if the Republican Party had used super-delegates, and I can't claim for sure that Bernie Sanders would've won the nomination if the Democrats hadn't, but I sure am curious to see that alternate universe.


I was disappointed with all of the 2016 Bernie supporters who were so quick to throw in the towel. For a brief moment after Trump's victory in 2016, some people were theorizing that Sanders might've done better against Trump than Clinton did, but by 2020, they'd given up, 'cause I didn't hear or read anybody saying that anymore.


I'm about 1/4 of the way into Max Boot's The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right (2018), and he says he calls himself a 'classical liberal' now, instead of a conservative. He hasn't yet come right out and called the GOP a Fascist Party, but he has quoted his own articles from 2016 in which he did call Trump a Fascist.


You're pretty much describing our Democratic Party, imo.


I go back and forth with myself on whether I want the Democrats to drop the little flags and play tackle football for a bit. I say "for a bit" because I don't really want our politics to go that way. What I want is to have two (or more) ethical parties, but that ship has sailed. For example, would I want the Democrats to 'stack' the Supreme Court? Again, what I want is in the rearview mirror. What I want is for Mitch McConnell to not have stolen Barack Obama's Court selection in 2016. I don't want the Democrats to stack the Supreme Court, or to gerrymander districts so the voters get the representation they would have if the system were working, but what I want is not always an option. I don't know for sure if we're there yet, but I'm starting to wonder at what point the Dems should stop taking the high road. It will be an embarrassment when it devolves that much, but sometimes punching back is the sensible thing to do.

Under proportional voting the democrats could splinter into 3 parties, GoP into 2.

Most likely the centrist types would hold the balance of power. Progressives still wouldn't get what they want except maybe social policy.

Tones the nutters down though. Less hold your nose at voting time.

 

[Farm Boy]

Results are the only thing that really matter in the end.

Fundamental disagreement.

 

[NinjaCow64]

The thing is that even within this period where the national candidate was Republican Bidens, under that national Presidential nominee the Republicans were doing horsehocky. Frequently. They were putting up votes to impeach Obama. They were putting up votes to overturn Obamacare. They were staging games of chicken with the national budget, even if it meant a government shutdown, to try to get their policy priorities passed. At the local level, they were putting up candidates who were winning elections, gaining control of state houses, and then using that control to pass policy priorities, even if those policy priorities ostensibly wouldn't pass Judicial Review.

Yeah you’re right and I forgot entirely about this. This is yet another hole in Sommerword’s argument that the Republicans were “hoping and waiting” - the Republicans were actually getting things done.

 

[NinjaCow64]

I want to address the point of ‘getting stuff done.’ The Democrats get a lot done, relatively speaking (I’ll come back to the relatively in a bit). We saw two massive spending bills passed under their watch in Biden’s early days, more student loan forgiveness in the last 4 years than the previous 40 years combined and quadrupled, an overall expansion of voting rights nationally even in the face of a party hellbent on the opposite, the legal mailing of abortion drugs, and pushes for free school lunches. Biden is Biden, and I think he is badly missing the point on abortion - his lack of conviction there sucks hard. But if you wind the clock back to Trump, he got almost nothing done as well. He got judges, but his Obamacare repeal floundered, his wall floundered, his signature legislative success was a tax break.

This is not true - Trump empowered Red States to push the most regressive regime across half the country.

If you spend any time online in progressive circles, you see people going endlessly “why can’t Dems fight like GOP, we lose every time” but if you spend any time browsing conservative circles, they are awash in “why can’t GOP fight like Dems, we lose anytime” (see: the most recent spending bills, which Dems got way more policy wins on; they knocked down 33 or 34 anti-LGBTQ riders, got significant expansions to housing and WIC and more).

Republican voters can be even dumber than Democrat voters sometimes. They are not correct about this.

 

[Narz]

Y'all (lefties) have too high standards, self-obsession and obsession w your little pet issues (gone is the days of "what can I do for my country") and no power so y'all just get ignored and cry, meanwhile right has unwavering loyalty, they don't even care about reality, they're just gonna play the rocky theme in their heads and go support the loud guy who makes them laugh and forget their traumas.

With a buffoon like Trump it shouldn't be close @ all but the left a bunch of impotent bubble boys fighting w each other.

I think roe vs wade (Hobbs?) will carry Biden's old ass barely over the finish line like covid did last time but I could be wrong.

Hope someone twists his arm to get some legal weed and psychedelic therapy up in this b**** god knows y'all need it.

 

[Senethro]

Y'all (lefties) have too high standards, self-obsession and obsession w your little pet issues (gone is the days of "what can I do for my country") and no power so y'all just get ignored and cry, meanwhile right has unwavering loyalty, they don't even care about reality, they're just gonna play the rocky theme in their heads and go support the loud guy who makes them laugh and forget their traumas.

With a buffoon like Trump it shouldn't be close @ all but the left a bunch of impotent bubble boys fighting w each other.

I think roe vs wade (Hobbs?) will carry Biden's old ass barely over the finish line like covid did last time but I could be wrong.

Hope someone twists his arm to get some legal weed and psychedelic therapy up in this b**** god knows y'all need it.

The clowns, reality ignorers and fascists are still at fault as well. They could choose to save themselves. They are not off the hook.

 

[Narz]

The clowns, reality ignorers and fascists are still at fault as well. They could choose to save themselves. They are not off the hook.

Yeah of course but if a bully continues to beat you up it's your job to get stronger. Every comedian making fun of them on YouTube may make you laugh from the safety of your room and you can seek solidarity from some online randos about "hey these guys really suck" but that's not action, it gives you a lil good feeling but you're not doing anything. It's like Rocky revealing in his superiority while Mr T trains like a beast.

(I remember that montage being way cooler but just goes to show most things seem cooler when you're a lil kid)

If Dems could get someone w even a tiny bit of charasma and genuineness (Trump is genuine, not to say he's honest) there wouldn't be any worries.

Trump can shoot someone on 5th Ave but lefties have to toe a line thinner than that WTC guy and issue trigger warnings and then people wonder why their guys just talk in word salads

 

[Gorbles]

The amount which people who don't consider themselves "lefties" consistently get wrong about "lefties" could fill a book.

 

[Senethro]

Yeah of course but if a bully continues to beat you up it's your job to get stronger. Every comedian making fun of them on YouTube may make you laugh from the safety of your room and you can seek solidarity from some online randos about "hey these guys really suck" but that's not action, it gives you a lil good feeling but you're not doing anything. It's like Rocky revealing in his superiority while Mr T trains like a beast.

If Dems could get someone w even a tiny bit of charasma and genuineness (Trump is genuine, not to say he's honest) there wouldn't be any worries.

Trump can shoot someone on 5th Ave but lefties have to toe a line thinner than that WTC guy and issue trigger warnings and then people wonder why their guys just talk in word salads

Its not inevitable that the left will win, or could win if it just fought in the correct way. It might never be sufficient.

If there is a responsibility, its on everyone. There are no grown up here to govern and teach the unruly children.

It might be instructive to think about why Trump is exaggerating only a bit with his 5th avenue shooting thing, but the cops are infiltrating environmentalist groups. Who is allowed to do and say what?

 

[Gori the Grey]

There may be some truth in what you say, @Narz, but if

lefties

get stronger

to rival that

bully

who doesn't

even care about reality

they may find that they have not

beat

the

right

but become

the right

i.e.

a beast

 

[Yeekim]

meanwhile right has unwavering loyalty, they don't even care about reality, they're just gonna play the rocky theme in their heads and go support the loud guy who makes them laugh and forget their traumas.

1) Why do you make it sound like it is a good thing?
2) That is not "the right", that is a bunch of idiots who don't care about reality.
3) From my (admittedly distant) POV, absolutely record amount of high-ranking Republicans have denounced Trump, including pretty much all of his former cabinet. Not really unwavering loyalty, except from aforementioned reality-ignoring idiots.
EDIT2: I mean...

List of Republicans who oppose the Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Nothing remotely comparable exists for Democrats, afaik.
EDIT: That said, I agree with

Y'all (lefties) have too high standards, self-obsession and obsession w your little pet issues

 

[Farm Boy]

You should note the lockstep votes in congress, too. But this big bag o'****s knows everything about Republicans, ey? *

The party of skin deep diversity is not an idle phrase.

*I guess you can take your pick. They're either inside their bubble, and looking out merely returns them a distorted funhouse mirror image, or, they're lying to you because politics. Maybe both?

 

[lymond]

Y'all (lefties) have too high standards, self-obsession and obsession w your little pet issues (gone is the days of "what can I do for my country") and no power so y'all just get ignored and cry, meanwhile right has unwavering loyalty, they don't even care about reality, they're just gonna play the rocky theme in their heads and go support the loud guy who makes them laugh and forget their traumas.

With a buffoon like Trump it shouldn't be close @ all but the left a bunch of impotent bubble boys fighting w each other.

I think roe vs wade (Hobbs?) will carry Biden's old ass barely over the finish line like covid did last time but I could be wrong.

Hope someone twists his arm to get some legal weed and psychedelic therapy up in this b**** god knows y'all need it.

Pretty good synopsis of the dysfunction with the Murican political system.

(Right) are not off the hook.​

I don't believe Narz was implying that at all.​

 

[NinjaCow64]

meanwhile right has unwavering loyalty, they don't even care about reality, they're just gonna play the rocky theme in their heads and go support the loud guy who makes them laugh and forget their traumas.

As I and schlaufuchs have explained, this is simply not true. The Republicans have been voting for their politicians because they deliver and when the Republicans put up someone who the Republicans don't think would deliver they don't vote for them.

Why should I, or anyone else, be expected to vote for a candidate who doesn't do what we want them to do? That is (supposedly) the whole point of democracy - you vote for candidates who represent your values. Biden doesn't represent my values, ergo I wouldn't vote for him if I was an American.

obsession w your little pet issues

Little pet issues like "Biden is facilitating a genocide" and "Biden is asleep at the wheel while the Republicans plan me and anyone like me".

For the record I voted Greens and preference Labor every election. I am not longer going to preference Labor because their support for a genocide is so far beyond the pale I can no longer support them.

Would you really vote for a morally bankrupt candidate even if they were on your side of the aisle Narz?

With a buffoon like Trump it shouldn't be close @ all but the left a bunch of impotent bubble boys fighting w each other.

lmao if you think Biden is doing terribly is because of the Leftists on twitter or CFC-OT then you're wrong. He's doing bad because he's done jack all for the average Joe and he's terrible at pretending otherwise.

3) From my (admittedly distant) POV, absolutely record amount of high-ranking Republicans have denounced Trump, including pretty much all of his former cabinet. Not really unwavering loyalty, except from aforementioned reality-ignoring idiots.

The Republican base still adores him, he won in a landslide in every primary where he was a candidate and many of the places he wasn't a candidate "None of these candidate" won instead.

 

[Narz]

3) From my (admittedly distant) POV, absolutely record amount of high-ranking Republicans have denounced Trump, including pretty much all of his former cabinet. Not really unwavering loyalty, except from aforementioned reality-ignoring idiots.

They're happy to Moderator Action: SNIP - keep it clean, narz - lymond ride their way to the top & denounce him once he's thrown them to the curb (and make some money with a book and podcast tour ideally).

Helping a bank robber do his heist, profiting off of it and then denouncing it later is not such an impressive gesture.

And the vast majority will still stand by him. They're like Job (from the Bible), you can do anything to them and they'll still support you if you promise to protect them from their perceived enemies.

 

[EgonSpengler]

@Narz seems to be conflating the American Left with the Democratic Party, which is to some degree understandable. But it's fraught, as our parties change over time. Our present understanding of the political parties only applies going back 5-6 years (and that was an example of abrupt change; I think gradual change over time is maybe harder to see). Before that, one's understanding of the political parties goes back maybe 50 years. Before that... etc. etc. If you go back 150 years, the Republicans were the progressives and the Democrats were the conservatives, although that's oversimplified, and the parties back then didn't map onto how we understand Right and Left today, so even that analogy is tenuous. As the issues inside the Overton Window change, so do the parties and the definition of Right and Left.

Today an American who is Left-of-Center can basically support the Democrats and/or focus on single issues (at the national level, anyway - people on the Left also make efforts at local levels, which can be a different ballgame). Also, our "little pet issues" are why we have 8-hour work days & child labor laws*, women's suffrage, the Civil Rights Act, school integration, interracial marriage, same-sex marriage, etc. It doesn't always work out - "little pet issues" also led to Prohibition (oops), continue to maintain the embargo against Cuba (d'oh), and make speaking about Israel a 'third rail' - but for the most part, that's how this country makes progress. "Little pet issues" is also how the Right attacks, fwiw, and sometimes successfully: The invasion of Iraq**; the 50-year project to overturn Roe v Wade.

An American today who is Right-of-Center faces a different dilemma, whether or not to abandon the Republican Party. Just as there's a hole in our Party system on the Left of the political spectrum, there's another hole opening on the Right as the two big parties shift around and the Republicans abandon conservatism and move towards authoritarianism. Someone on the Left has it easier, in a sense, because there's a "clearly-less-bad" option for us. (I do feel like it should be an obvious choice for an American conservative, but that doesn't make it less anguishing, and people on the Left have grown accustomed to having to settle for the least-bad option. Conservatives who suddenly find themselves without a party have my sympathy, even as I grow impatient for them to see what's going on before it's too late.)


* A quick Google search on the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 is not giving me all the information I'm looking for. I see that the bill passed the House, 314-to-97, but I can't find the name of the bill, who sponsored it, who voted for and against it, or what the arguments against it were. That's more research than I feel like doing right now. Could probably take a college class on it.
** To clarify, I mean they succeeded in launching the invasion of Iraq. The invasion was of course a failure, on almost every level.

 

[Lexicus]

2) That is not "the right", that is a bunch of idiots who don't care about reality.

Yeah, that's the right.

3) From my (admittedly distant) POV, absolutely record amount of high-ranking Republicans have denounced Trump, including pretty much all of his former cabinet. Not really unwavering loyalty, except from aforementioned reality-ignoring idiots.
EDIT2: I mean...

Most of those people are political nobodies these days exactly because the vast majority of Republicans support Trump.

Trump can shoot someone on 5th Ave but lefties have to toe a line thinner than that WTC guy and issue trigger warnings and then people wonder why their guys just talk in word salads

This is incoherent nonsense, Biden doesn't gaf about 'trigger warnings' and that's largely why he won the Democratic nomination.

lmao if you think Biden is doing terribly is because of the Leftists on twitter or CFC-OT then you're wrong. He's doing bad because he's done jack all for the average Joe and he's terrible at pretending otherwise.

One of the big problems is that there are too many conservative Democrats to actually pass laws that would make a material change in people's lives.

I don't believe Narz was implying that at all.

Narz is talking contemptuously about how the right would still vote for Donald Trump if he shot someone on 5th avenue while implying that people should still vote for Biden even though he's shot 10,000 children in Gaza. There's no substance whatever to his arguments, he could save time by just posting this image repeatedly instead of typing things:

 

[Narz]

Would you really vote for a morally bankrupt candidate even if they were on your side of the aisle Narz?

W electorial college voting kind of a waste anyway. In 2020 I voted for Sanders in the primary and Biden/Harris in the general even tho I don't support them.

Representative democracy isn't working on a national scale to bring us inspiring choices. I think we can probably all agree on that much.