Will Joe Biden Drop Out of the Presidential Race

[crimson5pheonix]

Indeed, it's not, partly because the DNC isn't a Party at all. The Democratic Party, of course, consists of the DNC as well as countless other factions, including the Sanders campaign (and his delegates), AOC, Warren, various others further to the Left as well.

But, yes, the point that the Democratic Party generally is right-of-centre is a valid one. I'm uncertain how you expect rewarding the Republican Party to convince anybody that right-wing policies are bad, though.

Well we tried rewarding Republican (D) before. It didn't work. We have literally done this before. Exactly this. Precisely this.
100% this.
Completely this.
This is old hat.
Been done before.
Tried and tested.
Old news.

It didn't work. It failed on every level. As it turns out, if you elect right wing people to enact left wing policy, they don't. They instead enact right wing policy. And when you run a party like that, you get no resistance to the opposing party when they want to go even further right. A strong minority party is infinitely better than a weak majority party.

 

[Seanchaidh]

He's done a few interviews and videos, but he's been keeping quiet for the most part, which isn't a bad strategy at this point. As I mentioned before, the best strategy at this point is to frame it as Trump v. generic Dem, effectively a referendum on Trump's time in office, and keeping a low profile for now helps with that.

That's the nicest way I've seen to say that Joe Biden is very senile and speaking in public makes it way too obvious.

 

[Silvanus]

Well we tried rewarding Republican (D) before. It didn't work. We have literally done this before. Exactly this. Precisely this.
100% this.
Completely this.
This is old hat.
Been done before.
Tried and tested.
Old news.

It didn't work. It failed on every level. As it turns out, if you elect right wing people to enact left wing policy, they don't. They instead enact right wing policy. And when you run a party like that, you get no resistance to the opposing party when they want to go even further right. A strong minority party is infinitely better than a weak majority party.

It failed on the count of enacting meaningful left-wing policy, yep.

How did rewarding Republicans (R) work out on the same measure? & How do they stack up in terms of enacting severe right-wing policy?

 

[Erttheking]

Warning HEROES Act "Doesn't Do Nearly Enough," Progressive Group Calls on House to Vote Down Democrats' Covid-19 Bill

"Progressives must oppose this bill so as to stop being taken for granted and to set us on a course that leads to stronger legislation moving forward."

www.commondreams.org

It's a giant corporate buffet with some tiny inconveniences to make it look like not-a-giant-corporate-buffet.

This is why, if you look at what the Democrats do historically instead of just their contextless voting record, you would see they aren't your friend.

By the way, thanks for brushing off my piles of sources by saying "that's in the past and doesn't matter", only to turn around and spam old voting records at me.

Yeah, let me take a look at that website you quoted from. Let's see some other articles they feature.

Jayapal Rips Democratic Covid-19 Bill: "Doesn't End Mass Unemployment" or "Ensure Affordable Healthcare for Everyone"

"The historic crisis Americans are facing will not end on its own. To end it, these three things—getting people paychecks, ensuring access to healthcare, supporting businesses and their workers—are critical. But this legislation does not yet address them at the scale necessary."

www.commondreams.org

Covid bill doesn't end mass unemployment or ensure affordable healthcare for everyone. And it's treated as reasonable that it would do this. Even though stopping mass unemployment is impossible right now, there are simply too many businesses that can't operate due to health reasons and we should be focusing on unemployment benefits, and passing a bill through a Republican senate with affordable health care for all is officially a waste of everyone's time because Republicans would sooner nuke Washington D.C. than pass such a bill.

Please get back to us with a website that doesn't waste our time with fucking fairy tales. I'm a progressive but I'm getting real tired of other progressives acting like all non-progressives are closet right-wingers. Put the No True Scotsman away, please.

Oh, and a message to the thread as a whole. I liked Bernie Sanders. I voted for Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders is not the fucking messiah and a speech impediment does not make Joe Biden senile.

Didn't think I'd be posting here again, but this thread was becoming a round of people just patting each other on the back.

 

[tstorm823]

The American politic is right wing. Like all of it.

This isn't true, it's just nonsense that's been said so many times that people don't actually think about it before they say it. There is a narrow set of issues in which America isn't as far left as only western Europe, not anything worth justifying your claim.

America is further left objectively than most of the world, and further left than even very left leaning places in a lot of ways. The world where America is all right wing politics comes solely from the imagination of communists who left reality behind, but few people are informed enough of both the US and the rest of the world to recognize the fiction.

Didn't think I'd be posting here again, but this thread was becoming a round of people just patting each other on the back.

Well that's just not true.

 

[Agema]

This isn't true, it's just nonsense that's been said so many times that people don't actually think about it before they say it. There is a narrow set of issues in which America isn't as far left as only western Europe, not anything worth justifying your claim.

Only by the revisionist assessment of left and right that the right wing dreamt up to remove loads of the bad things that right wingers have done.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

It failed on the count of enacting meaningful left-wing policy, yep.

How did rewarding Republicans (R) work out on the same measure? & How do they stack up in terms of enacting severe right-wing policy?

I don't care, I don't look to regular Republicans to do this. I'm not going to reward Democrats for not doing their job. I have lost all sympathy for the "but Republicans" defense. Yes, Republicans are bad. So why are the Democrats trying to be them? I don't want to vote for the same policies in a different color.

Yeah, let me take a look at that website you quoted from. Let's see some other articles they feature.

Jayapal Rips Democratic Covid-19 Bill: "Doesn't End Mass Unemployment" or "Ensure Affordable Healthcare for Everyone"

"The historic crisis Americans are facing will not end on its own. To end it, these three things—getting people paychecks, ensuring access to healthcare, supporting businesses and their workers—are critical. But this legislation does not yet address them at the scale necessary."

www.commondreams.org

Covid bill doesn't end mass unemployment or ensure affordable healthcare for everyone. And it's treated as reasonable that it would do this. Even though stopping mass unemployment is impossible right now, there are simply too many businesses that can't operate due to health reasons and we should be focusing on unemployment benefits, and passing a bill through a Republican senate with affordable health care for all is officially a waste of everyone's time because Republicans would sooner nuke Washington D.C. than pass such a bill.

Please get back to us with a website that doesn't waste our time with fucking fairy tales. I'm a progressive but I'm getting real tired of other progressives acting like all non-progressives are closet right-wingers. Put the No True Scotsman away, please.

Oh, and a message to the thread as a whole. I liked Bernie Sanders. I voted for Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders is not the fucking messiah and a speech impediment does not make Joe Biden senile.

Didn't think I'd be posting here again, but this thread was becoming a round of people just patting each other on the back.

Read the article in full and you would see that Jayapal is talking about within the context of Covid itself. The bill being pushed through by Pelosi doesn't help regular people in the areas of unemployment or health care and are in fact, giant bailouts of the private sector with a pittance going to everyone else.

So no, I won't stop using a source that provides context and analysis of the bills being put to congress right now. Especially not when people quote CNN or Politico at me.

This isn't true, it's just nonsense that's been said so many times that people don't actually think about it before they say it. There is a narrow set of issues in which America isn't as far left as only western Europe, not anything worth justifying your claim.

America is further left objectively than most of the world, and further left than even very left leaning places in a lot of ways. The world where America is all right wing politics comes solely from the imagination of communists who left reality behind, but few people are informed enough of both the US and the rest of the world to recognize the fiction.

While in a very broad sense, I'll agree that Europe isn't as far left as they like to claim, they are still further left than America overall. No, America is a plutocracy in the worst way.

 

[tstorm823]

Only by the revisionist assessment of left and right that the right wing dreamt up to remove loads of the bad things that right wingers have done.

Do you have any assessment of left and right under which the claim is justified?

While in a very broad sense, I'll agree that Europe isn't as far left as they like to claim, they are still further left than America overall. No, America is a plutocracy in the worst way.

It's not even Europe's fault. On the vast majority of of social and economic policies, they just see headlines about how Republicans are racist facist bigots and not even know what the comparison is. It's a regular occurrence, you'll see an article about Republicans being horrible and pushing for voter id or 20 week abortion limitations, and someone from Europe will be like "I can't believe Americans are still so backwa... oh wait, that's literally identical to what we do here." Because they don't know the actual comparisons between places, they just know the memes. And I'm not going to blame someone for ignorance of a foreign country's domestic policy, the fault is in the media outlets reporting things in aggressively biased ways.

Edit for an example. The best arguments for the "leftness" of Europe are labor and healthcare. A contentious labor issue in the US is "right-to-work" laws, laws preferred by Republicans to say employees cannot be compelled to join a union any more than they can be denied the right to. In US politics, this is almost always framed as Republicans trying to destroy unions. "In most Western European countries, the closed shop (one form of the union security agreement) is typically banned, while other forms typically go unregulated in labor law. This is not universal; for example, in Germany both the right to join a union and the right not to join a union are equally protected by law and the courts, and all forms of union security agreements are banned." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_security_agreement
So like... what the hell?

 

[Erttheking]

Read the article in full and you would see that Jayapal is talking about within the context of Covid itself. The bill being pushed through by Pelosi doesn't help regular people in the areas of unemployment or health care and are in fact, giant bailouts of the private sector with a pittance going to everyone else.

So no, I won't stop using a source that provides context and analysis of the bills being put to congress right now. Especially not when people quote CNN or Politico at me.

So you're allowed to declare that certain sources are trash, but your No True Scotsman touting website is a-ok? Stuff like this is why Bernie Sanders supporters are starting to get their own personal hatedom.

And can you get a source from another website that confirms what they're saying? I mean yeah, it says that, but consider the drek this website spews, I don't bloody trust it. So. Got a secondary source?

 

[SupahEwok]

So you're allowed to declare that certain sources are trash, but your No True Scotsman touting website is a-ok? Stuff like this is why Bernie Sanders supporters are starting to get their own personal hatedom.

And can you get a source from another website that confirms what they're saying? I mean yeah, it says that, but consider the drek this website spews, I don't bloody trust it. So. Got a secondary source?

Them's some spicy words, considering the article you linked hardly does more than quote and summarize the words of a House Democrat, and in the case of summaries, seems to link its sources every step of the way. At that point, you're blaming the article for fairly representing a Congresswoman. Like, whazzawha??

 

[Erttheking]

Them's some spicy words, considering the article you linked hardly does more than quote and summarize the words of a House Democrat, and in the case of summaries, seems to link its sources every step of the way. At that point, you're blaming the article for fairly representing a Congresswoman. Like, whazzawha??

My point with the article I linked was that the Democrat in question was making claims that I hardly consider reasonable. I mean, at this point, it's coming down to "yeah, people certainly are saying these things. Does it actually have any merit though?" I'm not accusing this website of lying. It's just that when these websites report on these kinds of things in this manner, it's usually because they think it has some kind of merit. You won't see Fox News covering either of these articles in such a favorable light. I'm not saying that these people didn't say it. I'm saying their claims are far fetched and veering into the whole "Progressives think they're the only true left leaners in the country" thing. Something I'm well and truly sick of. Something I say as a progressive.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

So you're allowed to declare that certain sources are trash, but your No True Scotsman touting website is a-ok? Stuff like this is why Bernie Sanders supporters are starting to get their own personal hatedom.

Sure. I'm sorry that I look at sources that seriously look at the bills being passed instead of just stopping at "$3 trillion by Dems, so it has to be good!" which leads us back down the path of the Obama administration.

And can you get a source from another website that confirms what they're saying? I mean yeah, it says that, but consider the drek this website spews, I don't bloody trust it. So. Got a secondary source?

I mean, do you want sources saying COBRA is an expensive policy, so the Dems paying for that out of pocket is like the least efficient way they could try to cover people? And that COBRA only covers certain people in certain situations anyway? For the second that should go without saying, you can look up the program to see that it's narrow coverage. To the first.

Study: COBRA Insurance Too Expensive for Unemployed

Most unemployed families cannot afford to retain their former employer's health insurance through the COBRA program because the premiums eat up more than three-quarters of the typical unemployment insurance benefit, according to a Families USA study released on Friday.

www.commonwealthfund.org

Why You Should Never Buy COBRA And Head To Private Insurers Instead

Buying COBRA means consumers should expect to pay about twice as much as a private insurance plan.

www.thestreet.com

COBRA: Why It’s So Expensive and How Alpine Helps Administer It

What COBRA is, why it’s so expensive, and how Alpine TPA can help administrate it.

blog.bernardbenefits.com

It's pretty well established that it's an inefficient plan that helps private insurers first and foremost.

 

[Erttheking]

Sure. I'm sorry that I look at sources that seriously look at the bills being passed instead of just stopping at "$3 trillion by Dems, so it has to be good!" which leads us back down the path of the Obama administration.

I know you don't stop at "3 trillion by dems" I know you stop at "Progressives smart, non-progressives dumb." I saw the way you ignored half the points Lil Devils brought up because she wasn't kissing the feet of the messiah Bernie Sanders.

Oh, I never said that the current system didn't cover health insurance for everyone. I was just on record saying that that was a solution that was never going to be passed with a republican held senate.

Covid bill doesn't end mass unemployment or ensure affordable healthcare for everyone. And it's treated as reasonable that it would do this. Even though stopping mass unemployment is impossible right now, there are simply too many businesses that can't operate due to health reasons and we should be focusing on unemployment benefits, and passing a bill through a Republican senate with affordable health care for all is officially a waste of everyone's time because Republicans would sooner nuke Washington D.C. than pass such a bill.

But hey, you said you're not going to vote for "corporate democrats" so you clearly don't care about solving that issue too much.

If I come across as hostile, it's because I am. I am so sick of this holier than thou attitude and people losing their heads ever since Bernie Sanders lost the nomination. I voted for the man. We lost. Get. Over. It.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

If I come across as hostile, it's because I am.

Cool.

You also haven't read through this thread, which I don't blame you for, it's 12 pages, so you don't know that she was ignoring my points well ahead of time, and flat out said that my sources don't matter, only hers.

You also have totally missed the conversations where people accuse Sanders supporters of cult like following up until they disagree with him in helping corporate Dems, going against the whole "messaiah" narrative shitlibs have spun about Sanders supporters.

So you should probably read up before you get sanctimonious.

 

[Agema]

Do you have any assessment of left and right under which the claim is justified?

Okay, here's an appropriate time to dig out a definition, as we need a reasonable set of criteria, and that which the average encyclopaedia or dictionary picks and defends is likely to be reasonable.

Wikipedia:

Right-wing politics holds the view that certain social orders and hierarchies are inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, or tradition. Hierarchy and inequality may be viewed as natural results of traditional social differences or the competition in market economies.The term right-wing can generally refer to ’the conservative or reactionary section of a political party or system’.

Thus for liberal democracies where hierarchy and social order is chiefly distinguished by the dominant economic organisation of capitalism, aspects like welfare, labour regulations, access to healthcare are key issues. In all, European countries tend to be more "left" than the USA by increasing access to or support from public services, and thus minimising the gap between the top and bottom of hierarchy. Consequently, one could look at social mobility and wealth inequality, where the USA tends to score poorly. These aren't just "a few things", they're extremely major aspects of societal organisation.

Spoiler: Labour unions digression

If you want to bring up labour unions, I would ask simpler questions of the rate of union membership, and how powerful are labour unions. Broadly, the USA would come very close to the bottom of a league table with Western European countries. This also has to be viewed often in a wider context. France has very low union membership: however, France also enacts a huge amount of worker protections into national law (implicitly, therefore, making unions less valuable). The USA both has very weak union membership, and very weak legal worker protections.

We could also consider in social issues that historically, the USA has been relatively slow on racial equality and equality by sexuality compared to most of European countries. Although the US left can often be forward thinking compared to its European equivalents on many social issues (and where powers have resided with states, some indvidual more lefty states very progressive), overall national policy seems more conservative, with greater continued resistance to such egalitarian policies. Ideas of law and order also often apply: right-wingers can often be stronger on enforcement (i.e. defending social order), often equating to more punitive justice systems - so, for instance capital punishment.

And we might note that in Western countries, the same parties that represent greater capitalistic hierarchy also tend to represent stronger social conservatism. For many other considerations relating to what is conservative or reactionary, as they relate to the place and time of a society, comparison may be extremely difficult.

The far right are usually held so because the far right have extremely strong and strict ideas about social order and hierachy - "in" or "out" groups. The most obvious is nationalism and the distinction of native and foreigner. This then naturally tends to go into preferred race, culture, religion; they also tend to have strong ideas about "proper" gender roles, sexuality, etc. These are normally backed up by heavy emphasis on law and order (i.e. enforcement as above). These are nearly always based in tradition and history (conservatism). The far right often seem to have a less capitalist agenda than the mainstream Western right, and to people used to thinking about left and right by capitalism, they look left-ish. However, what's happened is that they've moved key principles of social order and hierarchy away from economics.

 

[Seanchaidh]

But, yes, the point that the Democratic Party generally is right-of-centre is a valid one. I'm uncertain how you expect rewarding the Republican Party to convince anybody that right-wing policies are bad, though.

It seems evident that the Democratic Party elite (lobbyists, consultants, think tank lanyards and so on) doesn't really care if a Democrat wins the presidential election, so why should anyone else? If they don't care if their candidate is capable of winning against Trump when 'electability' is their entire pitch, then they're obviously not going to care about doing anything good with power. Indeed, such an organization stands in the way of any remotely necessary progress. The energy with which the Democratic party elite tries to crush the left in comparison to their absolute capitulation before the GOP makes it clear that they are an enemy. Hopefully they fail so continually or even better so spectacularly that people are forced to consider an alternative. I don't particularly care whether that alternative manifests in electoral politics or not so long as it appears.

Make it clear that the Democratic Party can't win by going right as many times as it takes for that message to sink in.

 

[Trunkage]

It's not even Europe's fault. On the vast majority of of social and economic policies, they just see headlines about how Republicans are racist facist bigots and not even know what the comparison is. It's a regular occurrence, you'll see an article about Republicans being horrible and pushing for voter id or 20 week abortion limitations, and someone from Europe will be like "I can't believe Americans are still so backwa... oh wait, that's literally identical to what we do here." Because they don't know the actual comparisons between places, they just know the memes. And I'm not going to blame someone for ignorance of a foreign country's domestic policy, the fault is in the media outlets reporting things in aggressively biased ways.

Edit for an example. The best arguments for the "leftness" of Europe are labor and healthcare. A contentious labor issue in the US is "right-to-work" laws, laws preferred by Republicans to say employees cannot be compelled to join a union any more than they can be denied the right to. In US politics, this is almost always framed as Republicans trying to destroy unions. "In most Western European countries, the closed shop (one form of the union security agreement) is typically banned, while other forms typically go unregulated in labor law. This is not universal; for example, in Germany both the right to join a union and the right not to join a union are equally protected by law and the courts, and all forms of union security agreements are banned." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_security_agreement
So like... what the hell?

To be fair, we get a lot of news about Democrats being racist, fascist bigots as well. It doesn't help when you have policies like the Ohio website trying to force people back to work through force. Very fascie, Ohio, stay classy. Minimum wage is set low because, you know, workers are stupid and aren't even worth that. If they JUST worked, harder they'd earn more. Despite business holding the purse string and giving money would hurt them financially. Gotta get that tenth mansion. A country is not doing exactly as we told it? Bomb them! Are they to powerful for us to invade like Irian? Sanctions! Bailout... America's workers are too stupid and not worth it to give much to, they wouldn't spend it the right way... let's give trillions to business but throw those workers a bone. Give them $1200. That will last them a few months and they will thank us forever. This bailout is almost as much Pelosi's fault as it is Trump's and McConnel. A lot of these polices like healthcare and unions or same sex marriage stayed the same under Clinton and Obama.

Like, people talk about how evil communist countries are (and still are) but it pails in comparison to the US killing millions over the decade for a quick buck. Capitalism, like communism, only works through violence.

 

[tstorm823]

In all, European countries tend to be more "left" than the USA by increasing access to or support from public services, and thus minimising the gap between the top and bottom of hierarchy.

And yet if you look at social spending per capita, the US would be squarely in the middle rate of western Europe (unless you count private social spending, and then we blow everyone away). If you look at federal taxation, the US is more progressively taxed than nearly any other nation on the planet. You may have seen stats sometimes saying that some percent of Americans can't afford a $500 emergency without borrowing money, as though there's just a huge amount of genuinely poor people on the brink of disaster. Since the pandemic recession started, people's savings here have been increasing and debts are getting paid off, because the reason people don't have cash on hand isn't because they can't afford to, it's because they don't feel they have to. Lots of people in America genuinely don't save for emergencies because they have that much confidence they'll be taken care of.

Consequently, one could look at social mobility and wealth inequality, where the USA tends to score poorly. These aren't just "a few things", they're extremely major aspects of societal organisation.

From what I've seen, actual studies on economic mobility have the US well in line with Europe, pretty much in the middle. At worst, sitting roughly alongside countries like Spain or the UK. The only time I've seen the US genuinely score poorly on social mobility were very abstract studies without any actual individuals considered, the sort of thing that's horribly skewed by Bezos-esque outliers in general population data.

If you want to bring up labour unions, I would ask simpler questions of the rate of union membership, and how powerful are labour unions. Broadly, the USA would come very close to the bottom of a league table with Western European countries. This also has to be viewed often in a wider context. France has very low union membership: however, France also enacts a huge amount of worker protections into national law (implicitly, therefore, making unions less valuable). The USA both has very weak union membership, and very weak legal worker protections.[/SPOILER]
Does the US have very weak worker protections? The US has federal worker protections, state worker protections, and a legal system that heavily favors the litigious victim. I genuinely don't know how Europe compares. I have personally been a blue collar union laborer in the US. The US has low union participation because the unions don't do anything. We don't need them. The Union didn't do crap but take some off the top. The company itself was fighting just to keep the place staffed, they were the ones implementing and enforcing safety standards, the union reps other than the lowest level person specific to our site wouldn't step onto the property because doing so would make them liable for conditions there, and they didn't want to know if work standards were low. They just wanted the guaranteed cash flow of having every manual laborer in the company obligated to pay dues. It's a racket. Companies are 1000% more concerned about their liability and OSHA than they are unions.

We could also consider in social issues that historically, the USA has been relatively slow on racial equality and equality by sexuality compared to most of European countries.

Nah.

 

[Silvanus]

I don't care, I don't look to regular Republicans to do this. I'm not going to reward Democrats for not doing their job. I have lost all sympathy for the "but Republicans" defense. Yes, Republicans are bad. So why are the Democrats trying to be them? I don't want to vote for the same policies in a different color.

They're not actually the same policies, though, are they? They're on the right of the political spectrum by most reasonable definitions. That doesn't make them the same, unless you just view it as a binary.

As an example: as proposals stand from the candidates (assuming follow-through), the federal minimum wage under the Republicans would be 7.25 USD, and the federal minimum wage under the Democrats would be 15 USD. Are these the same?

Under the Republicans, the federal contracts with private prisons will be renewed. Under the Democrats, they won't be. Are these the same?

It might seem trite or narrow-visioned to point to individual policies in this way, but it's in support of a wider point. This notion that the two parties are "the same" only ever works when people talk about the parties in broad, sweeping, really really vague terms. Look at the actual substance of proposed policy in any depth whatsoever and there's a huge difference. The prison reform thing alone is massive.

So, sure. Neither candidate will address the underlying issues of corporatism, lobbying, campaign finance etc etc. Does this mean all of these other fucking massive issues-- affecting millions of lives and livelihoods in drastic ways, and on which the candidates are undeniably miles apart-- get overlooked?

It seems evident that the Democratic Party elite (lobbyists, consultants, think tank lanyards and so on) doesn't really care if a Democrat wins the presidential election, so why should anyone else? If they don't care if their candidate is capable of winning against Trump when 'electability' is their entire pitch, then they're obviously not going to care about doing anything good with power. Indeed, such an organization stands in the way of any remotely necessary progress. The energy with which the Democratic party elite tries to crush the left in comparison to their absolute capitulation before the GOP makes it clear that they are an enemy. Hopefully they fail so continually or even better so spectacularly that people are forced to consider an alternative. I don't particularly care whether that alternative manifests in electoral politics or not so long as it appears.

Make it clear that the Democratic Party can't win by going right as many times as it takes for that message to sink in.

Yes, I'm sure after another eighteen electoral losses for the Democrats, those who died in the intervening decades (from drinking the polluted water, in workplace accidents, or in climate change-aggravated natural disasters-- y'know, many of which deaths could've been avoided had anybody but a fanatical Republican been in charge escalating them to high heaven) will feel it was worth it when they finally get to see Sanders enter the White House and make a start on sweeping up.

As I've said before, you're gambling, but with other peoples' money.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

They're not actually the same policies, though, are they? They're on the right of the political spectrum by most reasonable definitions. That doesn't make them the same, unless you just view it as a binary.

As an example: as proposals stand from the candidates (assuming follow-through), the federal minimum wage under the Republicans would be 7.25 USD, and the federal minimum wage under the Democrats would be 15 USD. Are these the same?

Under the Republicans, the federal contracts with private prisons will be renewed. Under the Democrats, they won't be. Are these the same?

It might seem trite or narrow-visioned to point to individual policies in this way, but it's in support of a wider point. This notion that the two parties are "the same" only ever works when people talk about the parties in broad, sweeping, really really vague terms. Look at the actual substance of proposed policy in any depth whatsoever and there's a huge difference. The prison reform thing alone is massive.

So, sure. Neither candidate will address the underlying issues of corporatism, lobbying, campaign finance etc etc. Does this mean all of these other fucking massive issues-- affecting millions of lives and livelihoods in drastic ways, and on which the candidates are undeniably miles apart-- get overlooked?

I have no faith that the Democrats would even follow through with their own platform. They have failed to do even this when I look at them. They have consistently failed on this regard for decades.

Instead the policies I do see them pass and support include tax cuts for the wealthy, financial deregulation, massive support for corporate industries, and hawkish warmongering on par with Kissinger.

I don't look at Democrat policies from the corporate arm of the party, I look at results. And they're abysmal.