Democrats already proposing austerity before DNC even ends

[Worgen]

I don't care about that, I would gladly pay higher taxes for M4A over premiums, deductibles, and copays because it's safer. It's safer to do so because you don't have to fear getting kicked off the insurance if you lose your job, and or the insurance company finds a reason to do so.

Hmm, so you say and yet here we are in this thread.

 

[Eacaraxe]

Myself and others in this thread are telling our stories of how much worse it stands to become for us and for the most part, the response from individuals like you, Gergar and Eacaraxe has been a resounding, "Meh."

I have no patience or respect left to give after seeing approximately zero fucks given for eight years under Bush and eight under Obama, for people who think the country is only now in an existential crisis and think they're owed the world for making empty promises to do the absolute fucking bare minimum so people can simply go back to giving zero fucks.

 

[tippy2k2]

To the first point, there are degrees of loss. I'm dead fucking serious, dude: I do not know if some of my friends and family, myself included, can survive 4 more years of Trump. If you can, mazel tov! You're lucky! The rest of us? I'm not hearing a whole lot of support or even general understanding of how much more fucked our situations stand to get. If anything, we're made out to be the bad guys for scrambling for the option that's least likely to kill us. Myself and others in this thread are telling our stories of how much worse it stands to become for us and for the most part, the response from individuals like you, Gergar and Eacaraxe has been a resounding, "Meh."

As I told Gergar12, you're clearly better off than me if you're willing and able to weather another 4 years of Trump. You should appreciate that a lot more.

No, I'm someone who has been dealing with chronic headaches for the past year (my anniversary of my first headache is coming up! I hope someone gets me some Birthday cake for it!) and have been to enough doctor appointments and treatments and I'm about one more test away from not being able to afford it anymore. I have drained my savings doing test after test after test for them to still not have any idea what's wrong. I hit my $3,000 deductible early in the year but even with my insurance paying for....I think 70% is their number, I'm spending hundreds of dollars every time I do one of these tests or operations. My last one cost me $1,000, a half hour procedure for them to move a fatty cyst from my shoulder...

I'm a single guy with no family that I need to support. I imagine most people in this country would basically be forced to just live with constant pain in their head because they couldn't afford to go to a doctor about it (and that's about to be me even after spending thousands of dollars trying to diagnose what the fuck is wrong with my stupid brain).

NO ONE should have to go through this kind of shit just to get medical care. If Biden isn't going to support measures so that someone else doesn't have to look over their bills and try to figure out which ones are worth paying and which ones can be held off for a little while longer, then he can get bent.

And you're right, I do appreciate that, even with these fucking headaches, I'm still in a better position than a lot of people. But The Democrats have demonstrated time and time and time again that their Corporate Donors are more important than The People. If changing them from the inside were a possibility, I'd consider it but as we saw with Bernie here in 2020, the Corporate Democrats have every advantage and will gleefully use those advantages to make sure that someone who might piss off their Corporate Donors can't win. If everyone who said "Third Party can't win, we HAVE to vote for The Devil or The Devil Light", maybe we would actually get the change that Progressives and The People actually want get done.

 

[Gergar12]

Hmm, so you say and yet here we are in this thread.

Yes because an undergraduate student totally makes allot of money.

 

[Mister Mumbler]

Well, go figure. Don't pay attention to this thread, and then it goes from 2 pages to 15 in the space of less than a day, with the discussion value of these past dozen pages boiling down to a bunch of school kids going 'nuh uh' at each other, so fuck it, time to throw the brakes off this complain train and ride it right off the rails.

Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden; fuck, marry, kill, let's do it.

Donald Trump, kill obviously. His track record with previous marriages kinda make the other two options a wash with him.

Hillary Clinton, gonna have to go with fuck. I feel there's something poetic about it after the whole Lewinski debacle.

And that leaves me married to Joe "Shoot-em-in-the-legs" Biden as my husband. A nice little surgar daddy to call my own, with his brain currently heading out the door so I should be free to have that date with Clinton.

EDIT: Spelling, cause I'm smert.

 

[Buyetyen]

But The Democrats have demonstrated time and time and time again that their Corporate Donors are more important than The People.

In what way does not voting hurt the Donor Class? Because by the sound of it, they're the ones you should be going after because they're the source of all this corruption. And you would be right about that much. I don't understand why so many people think that not voting at all is going to have any kind of impact on such a profoundly broken system.

 

[tippy2k2]

In what way does not voting hurt the Donor Class? Because by the sound of it, they're the ones you should be going after because they're the source of all this corruption. And you would be right about that much.

When did I ever say I wasn't voting?

I am voting. I will vote down the ballot for Progressives (people who actually support M4A). I will also likely be voting third party for President, I just don't really know who right now as I haven't really looked at anyone all that deeply yet. I keep hearing about that Howie Hawkins fella but I also heard that there may have been some fuckery involved in the Green Primaries too but again, I haven't looked into it all that much as of now.

As to hurting the Corporate Overlords, there's not a whole lot I can do against them except refuse to vote for the people they have in their pocket.

 

[Gergar12]

Sadly I live in a place with no progressives on the ballot this year, and even the local officials and state officials are scum. Our so-called democratic mayor told people to go to restaurants at the onset of the pandemic, and surprise surprise he is a neoliberal. Our Republican governor was doing a good job in the beginning but stopped after he received pressure from multiple business groups, and his democratic health advisor had people sent death threats to her. Yet somehow we are still a swing state. Go figure.

Also to the people in this thread, I have a pre-existing condition as well, and I can't even tell you what it is, because the stigma is so high. But Obama literally wanted to cut my grandparent's social security and medicare at the lowest point in our life. My point is this, there it's Clinton, Obama, and Biden they are all the same ideologically. Neoliberals are neoliberals.

 

[Buyetyen]

As to hurting the Corporate Overlords, there's not a whole lot I can do against them except refuse to vote for the people they have in their pocket.

The problem is that protest voting does not actually address the real sources, like for example unlimited dark money in campaigns, the first-past-the-post system, the lack of true proportional representation, the failures of the electoral college. It will make you feel vindicated for a minute, but it's not going to change anything. It's a superficial solution to a complicated problem and it's not even addressing the correct problem.

Supporting progressives is good. You should totally do that. But if you don't apply pressure after campaign season, you don't pound the pavement, you don't twist the thumbscrews, then you're just going to get more of the same. I only vote Democrat anymore because that's where you find the few progressive candidates who can actually win a general election. And seeding the lower levels with progressives has the best shot at triggering real reform. I also call my Rep's office whenever I have a particular issue-based bug up my ass to remind them where I stand and that I've never missed an election. Like I said, keep up the pressure.

We're in a real catastrofuck of a situation in that all of our most effective solutions require time that we're either rapidly running out of or already have. That frustrates me the same as it does you. The difference is that I look at what I have to work with and go from there. My ideal candidate is never going to get the nod unless AOC runs and wins the presidential primary. There are 4 years between now and the next presidential election. There's a lot we can do besides voting with those 4 years, and unfortunately we've been falling asleep at the wheel for decades. That's something progressives need to deal with: admitting that for decades we had the policies, but we didn't do the legwork between elections.

 

[tippy2k2]

The problem is that protest voting does not actually address the real sources, like for example unlimited dark money in campaigns, the first-past-the-post system, the lack of true proportional representation, the failures of the electoral college. It will make you feel vindicated for a minute, but it's not going to change anything. It's a superficial solution to a complicated problem and it's not even addressing the correct problem.

Supporting progressives is good. You should totally do that. But if you don't apply pressure after campaign season, you don't pound the pavement, you don't twist the thumbscrews, then you're just going to get more of the same. I only vote Democrat anymore because that's where you find the few progressive candidates who can actually win a general election. And seeding the lower levels with progressives has the best shot at triggering real reform. I also call my Rep's office whenever I have a particular issue-based bug up my ass to remind them where I stand and that I've never missed an election. Like I said, keep up the pressure.

We're in a real catastrofuck of a situation in that all of our most effective solutions require time that we're either rapidly running out of or already have. That frustrates me the same as it does you. The difference is that I look at what I have to work with and go from there. My ideal candidate is never going to get the nod unless AOC runs and wins the presidential primary. There are 4 years between now and the next presidential election. There's a lot we can do besides voting with those 4 years, and unfortunately we've been falling asleep at the wheel for decades. That's something progressives need to deal with: admitting that for decades we had the policies, but we didn't do the legwork between elections.

So let me make sure we're on the same page here with your plan...

Vote for the people who are in the Corporations Pocket. Let them get away with all the corruption and bullshit they pulled and demonstrate to them that they can fuck around all they want, they won't ever have to find out what the consequences are (if anything, you've demonstrated to them that their corruption and bullshit tactics give them the reward of Higher Office). Then, after they have been elected and no longer have any use for you, that's when you expect to have the power to pull Biden to the left and get him to backstab his Corporate Donors that he is so cozy with?

Then in four more years when the Democrats know that they can piss out any old Corporate Democrat as their candidate because everyone is so obsessed with VBNMW, they'll do the same exact thing as they did in 2016 and 2020. Corporate Democrats clearly demonstrated this year they have no problem stacking the deck and screwing over the Progressive Side of their wing so what in the world makes you think that in 2024, we're not going to be getting another old fart of a Corporate Democrat screwing over AOC or whoever Progressives push? Democrats know that you're going to vote for them anyway so why should they bother potentially stepping on the toes of the Corporate Overlords?

Does my plan of voting Third Party and telling Democrats that they fucked around, now you get to find out that you lose in November make any more sense? I'm honestly not sure. But we've ran the playbook you want here for the past two decades. VBNMW because we can't let [Insert Evil Republican here] win but don't worry, NEXT year we'll fight for actual change!

Vaas : Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact... same fucking thing... over and over again expecting... shit to change...

You want us to try the same play we've been trying for the last twenty years and expecting different results this time because...?

 

[crimson5pheonix]

This is how Democrats get shellacked in 2022

The latest Feature,/features,,features, breaking news, comment, reviews and features from the experts at The Week

theweek.com

Putting Biden in office will sweep Dems out of congress.

 

[Buyetyen]

So let me make sure we're on the same page here with your plan...

Vote for the people who are in the Corporations Pocket. Let them get away with

And you lost me. Next time reply to what I actually said.

It's not about getting away with shit, don't be a child. This isn't about vengeance and retribution. It's about doing something other than declaring your intention to protest vote as if that would make a difference to anything. It's about pragmatism. You shit on my "playbook" but at least I have one. None of you guys have proposed anything vaguely resembling a solution. You've just consigned yourselves to defeat. Seriously, you accuse me of doing something that doesn't work while embracing a practice that been proved not to work.

 

[tippy2k2]

And you lost me. Next time reply to what I actually said.

It's not about getting away with shit, don't be a child. This isn't about vengeance and retribution. It's about doing something other than declaring your intention to protest vote as if that would make a difference to anything. You shit on my "playbook" but at least I have one. None of you guys have proposed anything vaguely resembling a solution. You've just consigned yourselves to defeat.

I've tried to be patient and I've tried to learn what you (and Devils) are arguing for but I'm not going to waste my time with us going around in circles and let you call me names. Have a nice day.

 

[Buyetyen]

I've tried to be patient and I've tried to learn what you (and Devils) are arguing for but I'm not going to waste my time with us going around in circles and let you call me names. Have a nice day.

(sigh) You're right. That was not cool of me. I apologize.

So, trying this again, here's my thinking. The way the system is set up, third party votes only split the ticket, and both parties know this and have built their infrastructure around it. Combined with first-past-the-post and winner-take-all, and this effectively locks other parties out. That's why progressives tend to be going to the Democrats instead of third parties: it's the best platform they're going to get. That's a pragmatic decision on their part and I think they've got the right idea.

Back in the era of the Civil Rights movement, a lot of southern black people registered as Democrats specifically because their communities knew if they organized, they had the numbers to primary most of the Dixiecrats out of office. And to an extent it worked. I get it, working within a system this broken is repugnant and distasteful and I feel dirty having to do it myself. But I do it anyway, because pragmatically speaking it's the only place to start. We obviously both agree that seeding the down-ticket races at the state and local levels with progressives is important, I'm simply proposing that as a practical matter, these should be the races we focus the most on for the next few cycles.

The Squad were able to win their seats and keep them despite the establishment trying to put their dicks in it. They tried to primary the Squad from the right, and all that did was give them landslide victories. Like Bernie, they accepted no corporate cash and proved that it can be done. The establishment succeeds in getting their way in part because too many people can no longer imagine a different system. Spitting in the face of the donor class like AOC and Ilhan Omar and succeeding? Don't underestimate how important that can be in the wider fight.

Now, you're not wrong that Biden is an at best "meh" candidate. Trump on the other hand... like I've said, I am terrified that some of my friends and family won't survive another 4 years of him. I can't do much to change the system if I'm dead. And if I vote 3rd party, the odds that will send any kind of message to the establishment Dems are virtually non-existent. And when they lose, as we've seen, they're inclined to believe that it's because they weren't far enough to the right. That and most of them are millionaires, so they're not exactly "in touch." A full frontal attack on the problem isn't working, so we need to come at it sideways. Gergar describes it as a lesser of two evils argument, though I think it's more accurate to say that this is an argument of trading space for time. The establishment Dems are whores, every one of them. The Republicans though are measurably worse. They're an anti-human party and actively destructive. The Dems are bumbling, insidious and craven, but they're nowhere near as malicious.

What I am proposing is that rather than trying to send a message to the Dems at the top of the ticket, which won't get through to them anyway, we have to learn to play the political game better. I know for some people that sounds like an unpleasant prospect and it is. We're a bit short on options, however. The Donor Class will be controlling the presidency for the foreseeable future, so what I am proposing is that we hold our noses on Biden and make the down-ticket races our priority for the next couple of cycles. Instead of trying to effect change from the top-down, we need to be building up a more solid coalition of progressive voices if we want a real shot at the Oval Office. The Republicans understand this strategy very well. They know how many local races go ignored and many of their candidates can run unopposed. They have built a very solid power base on that strategy and we should just up and steal it.

I am asking my fellow progressives to acknowledge that the top-down approach isn't working. We need to pick up the slack on the down-ticket races and we have unfortunately been really lagging in that. Progressive turnout for the primaries this year was terrible. You and I showed up (I presume), but not enough others. And that's on the progressive community. We need to admit we've fallen asleep at the wheel and start making up for our mistakes. We need to commit harder and we have to be willing to do the really tedious and unpleasant legwork. We blew it this cycle. Yeah, Bernie was cheated, but the numbers are still there and progressive turnout was bad. We'll never hold the establishment accountable if we're not accountable to ourselves.

Does that help?

 

[SupahEwok]

I've said it before, I'll go ahead and say it again: the vaccine rollout is going to be the first and quite possibly biggest problem to tackle in the next administration. Who do I want in charge of it: Sleepy Joe and his cronies who at least can passibly administrate, or Trump and his despotism and mishandling?

Yeah, the Democrats are a bunch of fucks, and they don't deserve to win, and by and large, they don't have our interests at heart, and they fucked the primary process, nakedly, openly, twice in a row. Well, the Republicans aren't better. It's fuckery all the way down, but I'm gonna prioritize getting my vaccine in as soon as possible. Ain't fucking around with ideological punishment when there's permanent lung damage on the line.

 

[Buyetyen]

Ain't fucking around with ideological punishment when there's permanent lung damage on the line.

Before the pandemic I used my voice for a living. I'd like to go back to that afterward, so yeah, I'm going with the guy who doesn't hawk snake-oil cures in TV or think windmill cancer is a thing.

 

[Gergar12]

And that sums up my view.

 

[lil devils x]

The Corporate Democrats sabotaged Bernie at every stage. Had it been a straight, clean fight, I'd possibly consider voting for Biden as it is clearly the will of the people to not have nice things but it wasn't. The Corporate Democrats did everything they could to make sure that Bernie was taken down (as an aside, has there ever been in a Primary in the history of politics in America that had a bunch of candidates drop out and endorse a guy that they were beating?).

Like 2016, they worked harder to take Bernie down then they ever have to take Trump down. So yeah, fuck'em. It sucks that it has come to this but I'm not about to tell The Democrats that their conduct during the Primaries is OK by falling in line. They fucked around, now they get to find out. 4 more years of Trump isn't good (although I'm not voting for him either so that's kind of a moot point) but results that tell the Corporate Democrats that they can rig everything in their favor and get away with it I absolutely feel would be just as bad for this country.

And hell, I've said this before and I'll say it again here; even after all the fuckery The DNC and Biden did to make sure he was elected, I would STILL hold my nose and vote for him if he just promised to fight for M4A (The Bernie version, not his shitactular Obamacare). That's all I want (well, there's a lot I want but I would settle for just that; I wouldn't believe him and I 100% believe he'd be lying through his teeth but I'd still vote for him just for the slim chance that he's not lying to us). But he can't even do that. Not only will he not do that, he specifically stated that he would veto it if it somehow managed to get through to his desk (I don't give a fuck about his flowery "balanced budget" bullshit lines; no one ever asks where the money to pay for these constant military budget boosts and worst case, tax the rich whatever the difference between what we'd save with M4A versus our current system but I suppose the rich are the Corporate Donors and we gotta make sure they're protected from having to pay a little more).

You still have 3 months(ish) to change my mind Biden. All I want is to hear those five words and I'm (begrudgingly) yours: "I support Medicare for All"

Of Course they punished Bernie at every stage, that is what Bernie EXPECTED to happen. Hell I don't think that ANY group put up a " fair fight" in the entire history of elections in any nation on earth tbh. That is unrealistic and we EXPECT every candidate and their supporters to fight tooth and nail to get their candidate elected it is naive to think otherwise. Hell, even in school politics, none of us on student council had an easy path to get there. I literally had a girl I was running against for class treasurer start a rumor that I had boob job and had given some dude a BJ that I didn't even know.. That is just how this works in reality, and I didn't go home crying like a baby about it either. Bernie knew EXACTLY what he was getting in to when he told us he wanted to take over the the democratic party when he wasn't even a member of the democratic party. Bernie is and always will be an independent, and outsider. He went farther than any of us ever thought possible and I personally think he did a fantastic job and commend him on the improvements he made in the democratic party itself in the process. The last thing he would want is for people to just give up now instead of keep up the fight. Progressives only lose completely and go backwards when they give up altogether and stop trying to take their best path forward. When one path closes, another one opens. We just have to adapt and keep going.

 

[Agema]

I've said it before, I'll go ahead and say it again: the vaccine rollout is going to be the first and quite possibly biggest problem to tackle in the next administration. Who do I want in charge of it: Sleepy Joe and his cronies who at least can passibly administrate, or Trump and his despotism and mishandling?

No covid-19 vaccine for New York and California. Those fuckers didn't vote for Trump, why should they get any?

 

[Buyetyen]

The last thing he would want is for people to just give up now instead of keep up the fight. Progressives are only lose completely and go backwards when they give up altogether and stop trying to take their best path forward. When one path closes, another one opens. We just have to adapt and keep going.

I'm fond of Neil Gaiman's analogy of the mountain. Your goal is a mountain off in the distance and all you have to do is take the path that at that point in your life will take you closer to the mountain. Some paths won't be available sometimes. Some will take you away from the mountain. Either way, you still have to walk.