2020 US Election (Part One)

[Ironsided]

Or you could just sit in a corner, pout, refuse to participate, and hope that the situation will just somehow resolve itself...

That seems to be more of something someone who accepts any candidate would do.

 

[Phrossack]

I'm saying that centre-right Democrats can be trusted to push regressive policies. They simply won't push as hard as Republicans. Any progressives policies are going to be forced upon them, unwillingly, exactly as they would be forced upon Republicans. We don't have to regard ourselves as part of their coalition, or treat the integrity of that coalition as an imperative. We make private electoral pacts in the voting booth, but that's far as it goes. As soon as the election is done, people like Biden reoccupy their natural and inevitable place as enemies of progress, and must be combatted as such.

And how exactly do you mean to "combat" them once they are in office?

Democratic politicians do listen to their Democratic base, if it's loud enough. Republicans will always utterly ignore Democratic voters' wishes, of course. I'd rather have some amount of influence than absolutely none.

That seems to be more of something someone who accepts any candidate would do.

Not at all. I'm proposing pressuring candidates to pursue progressive policies, then use threats of withdrawn support to help force compliance. You seem to be proposing staying home and doing nothing at all after allowing the worst possible candidates to take power - complaining about Trump when you're locked out of power and aren't his constituency doesn't accomplish anything at all.

 

[Hygro]

What is realistically more likely to pull a Biden presidency to the left, resistance or compliance?

Compliance vs resistance? Good lord we’re doomed.

 

[Berzerker]

Well I never

My bias is based on what they've done and not on if a D or R is next to their name

Then again I'm in the Rust Belt and Biden style Democrats are really unpopular here.

I didn't know that, I thought Biden was somewhat strong in the rust belt. Is it because he was pro-Nafta?

Yes, we'd have to hold any centrist/conservative Dem president's feet to the fire. But the benefit of electing a Democrat is that they have to listen to left-leaning constituents at least sometimes for fear of losing vital support. Trump can safely ignore and trample on anyone not in his cult without consequence.

Thats true, Biden would have a Democrat House and maybe Senate pushing him in their direction. On the other hand Trump is so unideological a Democrat Congress could throw all sorts of progressive bills at him and he might sign some of it, he's to Biden's 'left' on issues like foreign policy and crime. If the GOP narrowly holds the Senate having Trump in the WH might be needed to get bills past McConnell like the first step criminal reform.

 

[Arakhor]

He might think about signing some of it, until his advisors get to him and tell him how fast Republican voters will abandon him if he does (whether or not it's true).

 

[Kyriakos]

No, you'd have to hold a progressive president's feet to the fire. A centrist Democrat is simply your enemy. Or, at least, he's not your friend. Just because he's on the same party ticket as your preferred candidate doesn't mean he's on the same side. That's exactly the confusion that got the Republicans a syphilitic god-emperor when they were supposed to get a dough-faced business conservative.


What is realistically more likely to pull a Biden presidency to the left, resistance or compliance?

There is nothing that can pull a Biden presidency to the left.

 

[Lexicus]

There is nothing that can pull a Biden presidency to the left.

That's not true. If Nixon could be pulled to the left Biden could be.

The main problem is that the organizational infrastructure no longer exists to do that. The unions just don't have the heft anymore.

 

[Socrates99]

I didn't know that, I thought Biden was somewhat strong in the rust belt. Is it because he was pro-Nafta?

Partially. The centrist dems like Biden, Clinton, Obama etc have abandoned unions. They dont go out of their way to undermine them like Republicans but they also wont lift a finger to help them. There are unions in the Rust Belt that flipped to support Trump for his protectionism but even before that the pro business GoP was attractive because people believed they'd at least bring in jobs. Mostly people just want policies that help them. Dems like Joe do nothing for the WWC but GoP tax cuts are an easy sell.

This makes the midwest look ultra conservative even in "purple" states. People turning away from candidates who do nothing for them doesn't make them conservative but for some reason MSM pundits think in order to appeal to midwest independents you need a conservative Democrat when it's really the opposite. You need a Democrat who will support unions and has policies that benefit the working class.

I'm a brewer, I spend a lot of time in the taproom talking to people from all over the state with varying backgrounds. What did they say about Obama? "Hope and change my ass, he did nothing for us." What did they say about Trump? "I don't really like him but he says hes bringing jobs back..."

Of all the candidates in the race Biden is the most like Clinton and we already saw how that plays out.

 

[rah]

While I'm not a fan of Biden, I'd vote for him over Trump. Heck at this point, I'd vote for Hillary over Trump which is something I couldn't do before.
Not that it made a difference in my state. Whoever the dem candidate is will win Illinois.

 

[Lexicus]

but they also wont lift a finger to help them.

Not 100% true but true enough. It's a vicious cycle: Democrats let Republicans pass legislation that undermines unions, then they lose a state like Michigan in a crucial Presidential election and throw up their hands and wonder WTH happened. Well, what happened is that you stood by and allowed (and sometimes connived with - I don't want to leave that out) the enemy and allowed them to all but destroy the mass organizations that got your voters to the polls reliably.

I'm a brewer, I spend a lot of time in the taproom talking to people from all over the state with varying backgrounds. What did they say about Obama? "Hope and change my ass, he did nothing for us." What did they say about Trump? "I don't really like him but he says hes bringing jobs back..."

I work in the labor movement (building trades union) and we're obsessed with centrism, most of the important people in our union are ideologically centrist and proud of it, and we sometimes support Republican candidates when they offer things for us (fortunately I've never had to be involved in any of those campaigns, which are relatively rare as you might expect - plus most Republicans who support our union are running for state, county, or municipal office rather than Congress or a gubernatorial seat).

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I think that if the Dems don't make a concerted push to win back union support in the midwest, it may be lost to the party forever after this election. I don't have nearly as much experience working with, in or around unions as @Lexicus but I did work in a union shop for a year and they were yuugely bigotted and very conservative in their political/social beliefs even when they supported Democrats. A few were openly Republican and I felt that most of the rest would have long since switched sides if the Republicans could go a single election cycle without attacking their union. By the time Obama was out of office I felt like even that prerequisite didn't have to be met for them to switch sides, though I was long since out of that job by that point so I don't say that with any ground-truth knowledge.

 

[Lexicus]

A lot of dudes in my union would definitely be Republicans if it weren't for the union. Union membership is the biggest predictor of white working class men voting Democratic IIRC (might have been white men without college degrees which is at best a dubious proxy for "working class").

In 2016 there was a lot of bitter complaining about Hillary wasn't offering us enough and Obama hadn't done anything for us, but most of the union's "intelligentsia" (that is, people on staff, people with informal leadership roles etc) were all for Clinton (union as a whole voted for Trump by somewhere between 60-40 and 70-30 IIRC). The General President of our union is from New York and had previous relationships with both Trump and Clinton: New York construction workers tend not to like Trump because they know him as an unscrupulous developer, and during Clinton's time as the Senator she had a very good relationship with our NYC locals (not so sure about the rest of the state).

 

[Socrates99]

Biden waxes poetic about the good ol' days when he could find middle ground with segregationists. It's hard to imagine him not conceding a lot of ground to an already extreme right wing. Worst candidate in the race other than maybe that guy who's floated the idea of having a mixed cabinet of Republicans and Democrats, that's Swalwell I think.

 

[Lexicus]

Buttigieg is the worst candidate in the race imo

 

[BenitoChavez]

Buttigieg is the worst candidate in the race imo

Why is that? He seems fairly progressive to me

 

[Lexicus]

Fairly progressive? The guy is bloodthirsty imperialist educated at Harvard who worked for one of the most evil companies in the world. He is not remotely progressive, he's a self-aggrandizing, slick-talking opportunist with no apparent principles whose main draw in the Presidential race is being a vaguely smart young gay white dude.

 

[BenitoChavez]

Fairly progressive? The guy is bloodthirsty imperialist educated at Harvard who worked for one of the most evil companies in the world. He is not remotely progressive, he's a self-aggrandizing, slick-talking opportunist with no apparent principles whose main draw in the Presidential race is being a vaguely smart young gay white dude.

Admittedly I've only seen a couple of his interviews but I don't think I've heard him talk about foreign policy much. What has he said or done to make him a bloodthirsty imperialist? Also what is the evil company he worked for?

 

[Lexicus]

Bloodthirsty imperialist because he went to Afghanistan and didn't conclude anything was wrong with the US war there. McKinsey is the company.

Here's a good article about him:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/03/all-about-pete

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

Alex Pareene wrote a solid article at the New Republic about the Democrats governing principals largely being one of amorphous enemies at best. Republicans name enemies all the time; usually Muslims, black people, liberals, Hillary, Obama, whatever, but Dems often coach their language in generalizations - 'wall street,' or 'greedy billionaires' at best, and even that is something shunned right now by Biden. I kind of see why this is this way; nobody wants Dems walking down some conspiratorial rabbit hole of casting the finger at all sorts of people, but there is a major difference between, say, singling out the Sacklers, an example the article uses from Warren, and blaming, like, black people or something. And most of them run as sort of instutionalists or system holders, when the right is super content to just break all manner of judicial rules or decorum. Even Sanders, who represents something of a more antagonistic candidate has been waffly/quiet/whatever on systemic democratic reforms (blasting away the filibuster, stacking the supreme court) or even some of the more radical social ones (he supports studying reparations but has been extremely dismissive of actually doing them).

Perhaps the saddest part is the Dem party is one that has always loved war, just, not when it comes to the kind of enemies that would given them moral or political victory.

Edit: My work internet is being wonky so this post has been mangled to hell and back but I think it's largely fixed.

 

[cardgame]

While I'm not a fan of Biden, I'd vote for him over Trump. Heck at this point, I'd vote for Hillary over Trump which is something I couldn't do before.
Not that it made a difference in my state. Whoever the dem candidate is will win Illinois.

This is the biggest problem, imagine how many millions of people do not vote because of FPTP.