Bernie/Biden task force presents suggestions
- Thread starter dreng3
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Manufactured cleavages, you mean. You might do yourself well to acknowledge the 56 years that happened between 1876-1932 in a context not limited to "Jim Crow". The key points of which being the stolen 1876 election, Compromise of 1877, and Gilded Age particularly in the north.
Because god forbid we acknowledge radical Republican corruption and attachment to robber barons and machine politics dovetailing neatly into convict leasing for northern industry, the deliberate and targeted hiring of black strikebreakers to divide and stoke racial tensions between labor and civil rights (actually, God forbid liberals ever admit George Pullman and his company existed at all) for thirty years culminating in the Red Summer, wide scale defamation and suppression of labor and reformists throughout the period, and the first Red Scare. God forbid we admit "liberal" Republicans sold the South down the river and condemned black Americans living in it to a century of Jim Crow to ensure robber baron-friendly Hayes took office and not the reformist Tilden.
Oh no, we're a kinder, gentler, more accepting nation now, who would never be so foolish collectively as to repeat the mistakes of the past...right?
It's not like the civil rights movement started during Eisenhower, he embraced it to the point of deploying the Guard to ensure civil rights in the South, and two civil rights acts (however weak) were passed under his administration. It's not like JFK simply talked a big game about civil rights but sat on his thumbs and stymied civil rights legislation behind closed doors, only having been prompted to action being shown the power of black voters as a bloc. It's not like LBJ was behind closed doors a stunningly vulgar and emetic racist, forced to action to preserve JFK's legacy and motivated out of raw opportunism.
And even then, the age of felon disenfranchisement and mass incarceration was hot on its heels, ushered in by the "war on drugs". You're incapable of seeing this in any context other than moral, when you ought to be looking at it economically: American industry demands a cheap labor base in the form of a permanent underclass, and a permanent underclass American industry shall have. Slavery never stopped, it evolved, and it should be no surprise which group of Americans are left holding the bag.
Here's where you go completely off the cliff. You want to pretend like most others do there have "only" been "two" realignments. No. We're in the sixth party system, and the writing's increasingly on the wall we're transitioning into the seventh. To what you refer as the "first" realignment is the third party system, and what you don't want to admit was the period was marked by Republican corruption and Gilded Age corporatism. To what you refer as the "second" realignment is the sixth party system, and you want to pretend the fourth party system (the Progressive era) and the fifth party system (the New Deal coalition) just didn't happen, because to admit that is to admit technocratic corporatism isn't the hot shit you're implying it to be.
And Democrats aren't a force for progress, they're a force for the status quo. That was true in the '60s with black Americans, that was true in the '00s for same-sex marriage, that's still true today for the greater LGBTQ umbrella. Funny you seem to forget, or don't want to remember, Democrats were the party behind DOMA and DADT, and fought on that hill until the point polling numbers showed beyond doubt Democrats would lose legitimacy should they fail to act. Democrats had to be forced to push for civil rights, Democrats had to be forced to push for marriage equality, and they'll have to be forced to push for gender equality.
So no, I don't think I will stand for being "well ackshuallied" on this one.
Yeah, if you remove exception after exception after exception, you're not gonna be left with much.
What other avenue to the Presidency has a higher success rate?
Yes, it is by definition government-subsidised healthcare. That's not the same thing as M4A, though; the public option would exist as an option alongside the for-profit private companies. And some of those for-profit companies will offer more comprehensive coverage than the (probable) fairly basic level of coverage offered by the public option, and some of those for-profit companies will still be the option of choice for various workplace insurance plans for various reasons.
It doesn't dismantle the for-profit medical sector, and won't end up covering everything the companies cover, just the basic stuff. That's the catch. It's far from perfect. It merely exists alongside them as a baseline, always-available alternative. And it's only free for those on the lowest income levels.
It's still a hundred times better than the shit-show on offer currently, and approximately a thousand times better than Trump's proposal to cut the budget by 800 billion and replace it with nothing.
Not being Vice President, for starters. Military experience, for another. Being able to form coherent sentences is a plus, as is not subjecting woman after woman to scratch & sniff tests.
Edit:
So don't remove exceptions. Except for ascendance as a result of demise or resignation, I stand staunchly by that given that my original post said that that was the best way to become a P from being a VP. And I stand by taking out pre-12th Amendment elections.
You're left with a ratio of 3 successes to 6 failures.
Seriously man, I was trying to be generous here.
Also, I'm sorry for the number of edits I have made in quick successions after posts tonight. I'm tired and my thoughts are forming in bits and spurts.
On the one hand, that's nice and I approve (with the exception that I still take exception to the "low income" wording since it does not explicitly include no income Americans). And I don't feel ashamed to say that I approve of that idea, it's a step in the right direction, and what Obamacare should have been all along.
However, I do feel safe in saying that I do not believe that it will happen. I disagree with Eacaraxe's overwhelming cynicism as to the motivations of those who drafted this proposal, but I believe that he is correct that it will be henpecked to death through the process of becoming a part of the party platform and the legislative process.
No, that's my raw sensuality and animal charisma.Oh, Ewok!
Your questioning of authority makes me swoon.
Oh...I recognize that look
OT: Someone wake me up when Biden is actually supporting some of these (some look pretty good but this is just a Task Force, Biden could just tell them all to get lost and if you don't like it, vote for someone else per his typical response when questioned by people during The Primaries).
The insurance one intrigues me the most given what I assume is my crystal clear stance on our health care system by now but as Ewok stated, it sounds too good to be true from Joe Biden. I'd have to get a lot more concrete information about what exactly his plan with that program would be because it sounds a LOT like M4A except it's means tested (or at least I assume it's means tested because if it's not, there'd be no reason for everyone NOT to join with this program based on the description in the story). Usually if you're seeing something that seems too good to be true, it is.
But again, all those questions hinge on whether Joe "I'd veto M4A" Biden would even do these recommendations...
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Ludicrous position on legal weed. It's broadly popular with the American people, and the reason he's against it is that he's brought by the alcohol companies, and the likely the tobacco companies.
Are you happy suburb Karens, and older people of color who have given up on change. You did this, we could have had Bernie. Any drone strike deaths and future wars started by Biden are on the Establishment, but also Biden's deplorable primary voters.
That's right if you voted for Biden you are a terrible human being. I said it.
Are you happy suburb Karens, and older people of color who have given up on change. You did this, we could have had Bernie. Any drone strike deaths and future wars started by Biden are on the Establishment, but also Biden's deplorable primary voters.
That's right if you voted for Biden you are a terrible human being. I said it.
Ah man, I always wanted to be called a terrible human being by a random person on the internet!
Phew, can scratch that one off of the bucket list, I can work on the next item. Where am I going to find 500 gallons of maple syrup in a pandemic...
This is not meant for you. It's me ranting on the fact that Biden is a horrible human being who has done numerous bad policies, is on the wrong side of history, and his supporters are even worse.
Allot of his voters will die before feeling the effects of his climate change policies or lack therefore, but I won't, and I will have to live with it. And that's not even counting who knows how many drones strikes Biden will do on the global south before his 4-year term ends.
Because the DEA and conservative state police can still use drugs as a way to arrest their political opponents; the left, and people of color. How many Jeb Bushes have been arrested for legal weed vs people of color?
States make deals with private prisons to keep a minimum number of prisoners. That means states must actively be arresting and sentencing citizens to jail time in order to keep prisons stocked.
States have to pay out big to the prisons if they don't keep up.
The majority of arrests and convictions are drug convictions.
Prisons profit from their prisoners by subjecting them to penal labor, paying out under a dollar an hour for their industry per head.
What you've got here is a hellacious cycle of arrest, exploit, release, and arrest again to maintain a "shadow" economy of what is slave labor in all but name. Look into it if it sounds too crazy to be true, it's all on the books. States have no incentive to either relax drug laws or to provide social services to try to act against recidivism, because it interrupts their contracts with private prisons. They have no reason to change the status quo unless their citizenry make it a big enough issue to change. In conservative states where people like to be "tough on crime and tough on people", there is little political capital to use to make this change, which is unjust to those suffering through this system.
It's easy to dismiss as "people just shouldn't commit crimes", but I think that injustice should be confronted and opposed. The federal government tends to step in when states can't or won't; as the states drag their feet, they're only inviting heavy handing federal intervention in the long term.
I mean, if a cop can't "smell marijuana" during a routine traffic stop for driving while black, how are they going to justify the warrantless vehicle search? If they can't search the vehicle warrantlessly, how is the black driver supposed to "pull a gun" from inside their seat buckle and give the cop an excuse to summarily and extrajudicially execute him? And if they're not laying on the ground unconscious and bleeding out, how is that 8 ball in the cop's pocket supposed to magic its way onto the driver's body? This is a slippery slope man, let's get serious -- what are you going to suggest next, ending qualified immunity and prohibiting police departments and courts from refusing to remit internal investigation findings into public record?
Look, metropolitan police departments have long and proud histories dating back all the way to mid-19th Century slave patrols, for-hire strike breakers, and nativist street gangs. They're represented by the best of the best of machine politicians and well-connected backroom dealers, through unions with deep and extensive financial, political, and social ties to elected officials and local bosses. Would you really want to be "that guy" to dismantle America's longest-running and highest-held tradition of protecting property over people, and crushing the collective will of the impoverished and oppressed in the name of the ruling class?
What are you talking about? States' rights have never been used to advance or preserve any untoward policy in the history of the United States. I hereby nullify your post.
- May 6, 2020
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Oh man, you're right.
Guess I won't be voting for Biden now. Thank you for steering me straight!
But that is just lying to yourself, if Biden accepts most of these recommendations he will still be the most progressive president in Us history, Bernie say since FDR, but since everything is viewed in contrast to the present it is an odd comparison.
If you refuse to look at the facts because you want Biden to be a bad pick, then you're a defeatist.
Biden is not everything one should, or could, hope for, but progress is a a process. The first goal must be to create a space that allows for progressive thought and progressive voices, it is impossible to jump straight to solutions.
Just look at Trump, once he was elected the far right conservatives came crawling out of the woodworks, because they had representation and were emboldened by the president, there is a hope that with Biden in office the left will start to stand up for itself.
Ewok has stated before in the thread that they intent to vote for Biden though. Sure they also are going to despise doing it, but they are still voting for him.
Correction: I intend to vote Biden if the Boomer Doomer doesn't get him or Trump first.
