John Fetterman says he'll 'never understand' progressives who refuse to support Joe Biden
businessinsider.com
The Pennsylvania Democrat recalled his time serving as a Hillary Clinton surrogate in 2016, even after he supported Bernie Sanders in the primary.
I don't like Joe Biden, but this isn't a presidential approval poll, it's an election, and he's clearly better than any of the alternatives. And when it comes down to it, he's been better than I expected. We could have just had an exclusively centrist presidency, and while there's been plenty of centrism, he has been persuadable to progressive action.
And frankly even if you can't bring yourself to express support Biden for some reason, it should be pretty easy to want anyone who willingly associates with Republicans to lose and lose badly, because they're way beyond stealth-mode fascism now. Even the most jaded "they're all neolibs" voter from earlier elections can't possibly ignore that the Republicans are just fash now. There's a real danger if they win that cities end up with federally tasked jackboots kidnapping protesters like Portland.
When the vote is between someone (and a party) who says "climate change is more worrying than nuclear war" and "climate change is a hoax" the choice should be clear for any reasonable person. All the treason stuff aside (though very important, everyone should already be decided on that), climate change is the biggest issue for everyone I know. Probably for any average person under 50 if I had to guess.
I've seen people saying Hexbear users have been brigading politics communities of other instances. Not sure if it's true, but it would explain the massive influx of idiotic far right morons with a 6th grade writing level making bad faith arguments.
Hexbear is leftist and lemmy.world defederated from the instance so you're speaking of phantoms
I think he's suggesting hexbear users are making accounts on non-defederated instances to troll
So baseless conspiracy without a shred of evidence.
"Support Joe Biden" - Yes.
"Support particular policies of Joe Biden" - No.
Democrats are not a cult of personality. We can disagree with particular things the president does without wanting to see him defeated.
I think he's talking about the people who would rather let Trump win than support anyone right of Bernie.
We need ranked choice voting.
We need a voting system that eliminates the spoiler effect and allows for showing intensity of preference.
RCV does neither but STAR voting does both
He specifically said "get behind the policies of Joe Biden". If it's just voting I'm with Fetterman, but you don't need to recalibrate your policy supports because anything less than full agreement is treason.
We don't vote on policies though, we vote on people (at the federal level)
Sure, and if it's just voting and saying "voting for Biden is important", then great, we're good. Biden is obviously better than any Republican and Republicans not having power is important. But what that doesn't mean is tabling advocacy for progressive stuff because it's not what he's doing or pretending bad policies just didn't happen.
Sure, as long as it's put in context. Too many young people are emphasizing the second part of what you said over the first part.
I like Fetterman, but I don't think he's the sharpest tool in the shed. Nuance is likely not his strong suit.
I feel like this is the new boogie man for the DNC. My close circle of friends all don't like Joe Biden, all voted for Bernie in the primary against Hilary. Still showed up to vote for both her and Biden.
There's plenty of people who didn't show up for Biden and Hilary that have similar views and I don't think it's as much malicious as it is apathetic. They don't do enough to give them a reason to show up. They don't "energize the base" well enough. The Democrats need to get people excited for their policies somehow.
Wouldn't a good way to do that be to have compelling policies? Off the top of my head I'd think putting abortion protections/rights into explicit law would be a start. Frankly anything that is currently only legal on the basis of supreme court decisions also seems ripe for putting into legislative policy pushes to make into explicit legal protections, rather than relying on some decision that may be overturned by an arguably compromised court.
In that vein, expanding protections to the LGBT+ community would be another good piece to their policies. Also, on a larger note, more explicit and enthusiastic support of active unionization efforts that have been happening across different business sectors.
However, even beyond these, some that would apply more broadly might be policies to address housing and rent costs, as these affect basically everyone and anyone. Policies seeking to address housing/rent, education, and healthcare costs would altogether, I think, speak to a wider swath of the public than strictly focusing on the aforementioned concerns, but would also include them, e.g. combating redlining, undermining of public education, denial of medical services to pregnant women & trans people, etc.
I'll admit, maybe they have been pushing for some different parts of these (I'm aware of the Biden administration sort of trying to address college debt and getting screwed by the courts), but by and large I don't think I've seen a clear set of policies by the Democratic party of the United States to be excited for. Far more of it has appeared rather watered down and more along the lines of, "Well, we're not the Republicans at least!" instead of enthusiastically standing for something more constructive.
I'm not against any of those policy points you listed. But none of them would get me nearly as excited as them actually following through on raising taxes on the wealthy. They haven't even really attempted that in decades. It's been all cuts by the Republicans with no action from the Democrats. Making priority one rolling back the tax bill passed under Trump which lowered taxes on the wealthy and raised them on the middle class would of made me excited to vote for Biden again.
To me, this is supposed to be the main difference between the two parties and how they run the country. Social issues are important, but I'm sick of the media and politicians ignoring fiscal/tax policy. Biden throws out a soundbite about taxing the rich and being pro labor every once and a while, but makes zero action that way.
Fwiw that's why I included the parts regarding policies addressing various costs (housing/rent, education, healthcare).
Ideally taxing the rich would lead to actions addressing those, but if we're realistic, the odds are just as likely for those tax revenues to go to subsidizing some other businesses, and the military, with a depressingly low amount allocated towards public domestic concerns like helping provide shelter, education, and healthcare. At least, the odds are likely they'll go that way if not coupled with policies of using the tax revenues towards domestic efforts.
I would say "Then why would they be considered progressive?" but then I remember Tankies exist.
It's not that I don't support him, it's that I do not support anyone over the age of 65 being in any position of any power anywhere.
Yeah, but you're still going to vote for him, just like I'm going to have to...
We don't really have a choice.
But it's not enough for moderates to count on progressives voting for them in the general, that's not "supporting" to them anymore.
They want our unwavering support and complete refusal to criticize them before, during, and after assuming office.
They've been slowly creeping right for so long chasing conservative votes that they've got the same expectations of their voters that Republicans get.
I think more than a few of the party leadership truly wish Dem voters were more like Republican voters.
This is the real problem. Not Biden's age or his actual policy goals and achievements. It's that we know what we're getting and we know we won't be enthusiastic about it.
But ya gotta do what ya gotta do, and unlike last time I'm in a swing state and can't cheekily write in my favorite candidate without ending the world.
Enthusiasm for Obama died down once reality hit too.
There wasn't ever enthusiasm for Biden, though.
Enthusiasm doesn’t lead to anything most of the time. Throughout history the greatest Presidents all had to make difficult decisions that either went against their ideals or were questionable if they had the right to do them. Anyone can run on grand ideas, but once you’re in the seat the unattended consequences are revealed to you, and unless your a monster who doesn’t care, they have to be dealt with.
An example that made me change my mind about some things under the Obama administration was watching documentary series on declassified CIA/FBI counterterrorism incidents. The number of plots they were stopping was overwhelming. And if those interviewed are to be believed those were only a small fraction of the situations they dealt with.
He's got dozens of aides and advisors. No one man's got all that power.
His only redeeming quality is not being Donald Trump. He’s otherwise too fucking old and out of touch with the vast majority of the country like most of our government is.
It's almost midnight. You just got out of your job, a restaurant in a somewhat seedy location in old downtown. You leave through the backdoor into an alley and suddenly notice you're not alone. The metal door just closed shut behind you.
You look to your right. There's a guy with a knife. He's looking at you and smiling in a weird manner. He starts walking towards you menacingly.
You look to your left. There's a well known old drunk there. He smells bad and likes to hug people who are passing by. If you go that way, you will be hugged by him.
What do you do?
If you go right, you'll get stabbed and killed. If you do nothing and stay put, you'll get stabbed and killed. If you go left, you will be hugged by the stinky guy. It's disgusting and not ideal, but you'll not be stabbed and survive.
What do you choose?
I see people all the time with the dumbest arguments to not vote. "He's not progressive enough", or "he's part of the system", or even "he didn't do enough for X" (insert your favorite minority here).
It's all true. But the universe is not a perfect or ideal place. Not voting for the imperfect guy gets us a true horrible alternative. It's a choice between bad and awful.
Please vote bad and keep the awful away.
Gotta move the Overton Window from the far right back towards the center right before you can start moving it to the left.
Tell that to the Democrat PACs funding the most insane fascist Republican primary candidates, so they can point out how insane their opposition is, effectively shifting the Overton Window even further to the right.
Lol did you do this on purpose?
The United States is not a democracy. In 2016, a man who lost the general election was illegitimately installed as president under the guise of some imaginary lines having more meaning than the actual, objectively factual will of the people as measured through a democratic vote. Unless you're in a swing state, who you vote for doesn't matter at all.
There are many types of democracies, and we live in a representative democracy which is very much a democracy.
There is exactly 1 direct democracy on the planet. Costa Rica is close but not quite.
Even ignoring how your vote doesn't matter if it's not a swing state, your vote is also worth many times more or less both for legislators and the president depending on which state you live in. That's not a democracy. In order for weighted votes to count as a democracy, you would also have to count much more strongly weighted votes, like if for example, billionaires' votes were worth a million times that of the average Joe.
That's like saying your vote doesn't matter if you have a minority opinion so democracy doesn't exist at all. It's a bullshit line of reasoning.
Also your vote is extremely important at the local level. Our housing crisis is entirely a local voting issue.
A billionaires vote counts for exactly the same as yours. Sorry to break your bubble.
I feel like you skimmed my message instead of actually reading it, so I'll give you a chance to reread it.
No your post is just nonsense people repeat as part of the general American zeitgeist of "can't trust government." It has no basis in reality.
I choose neither. Instead, I jump, grab the bars of the fire escape overhead and climb up. Stinky hugs stabby, gets stabbed and dies. Then I jump down from the fire escape onto Stabby, knock him down and stab him with his own knife.
The rusted fire escape cuts your fingers as you latch onto the bottom rungs, sending you plummeting to Stabby Smile.
Well, I just rolled a D20 and got a 3, so fair enough...
Teenager moment
and then everyone clapped
Ah, the false dichotomy, neat.
Abstaining is always an option. You can always just ignore either shady individual - you aren't required to pick one.
Yeah, I can think of a parallel. The Soviets and the West allied to defeat Hitler but neither wanted to live under the other's rules.
"Not GOP" is the best choice, but I'd like to see a different "not GOP" than the current one. Or even better, a system that doesn't boil it down to two choices and an all or nothing vote.
The difference there is that they knew eventually the war would be over and they didn't have to be allies any more. Instead, the DNC pulls out this same rhetoric every election, and they'll never stop.
Yeah, another difference was that the Soviets and the West both wanted to defeat the Nazis. I think the moderate Democrats know that if the right is properly defeated (with election reform that opens up the system), they'll also lose their power since the "we're not the GOP" votes will dry up. Though the game is getting more dangerous as the GOP's base is calling for Democrat blood and they don't need the Dems like the Dems in power need them.
You're 100% right. I pretty much hate Joe Biden. But I voted for him and will again, because there's no better way to move towards what I want unfortunately.
Stop downvoting the exact sentiment this article and thread are espousing.
Wtf? So what they hate Biden? Mf voted for him!!
Is it already the time of year to bash progressives in case democrats lose so that they can be blamed for it? The extent of support Joe Biden will get is a vote against the republican party. As a candidate himself, he sucks as does the "democratic" party in general.
to be fair, he's done a lot more with his term than I had ever expected.
In the primaries, I supported progressive candidates like Sanders and Warren because I think their policy prescriptions would make for a better America. In the general, I voted for Biden. That was a harm-reduction vote.
What I don't like to hear, in the primary, is the 'you have to vote for the candidate who can win' line of argument, which begs the question it pretends to answer- if everyone who says "I'd vote for x but x can't possibly win" just voted for x, x would actually win. This gives whoever tells you that "x can't possibly win" the power to get you to give up on voting for what you want, which seems to wag the dog.
In the general, between dem and gop control, it's not a close contest for me; it's between a party afraid to do progressive things the voters want and a party that will do whatever the fuck it wants no matter that nobody wants that.
Yes, our electoral system of first-past-the-post demands that we hedge our bets and compromise in order to avoid the calamity of electing a fascist in this election cycle, but it's hard to support with evidence the idea that what makes a progressive candidate "risky" isn't just a self-fulfilling misperception that causes the party to spend (or not-spend) money to prevent progressives from becoming party nominees. After all, research consistently shows that politicians of both parties routinely overestimate the conservatism of the voters.
I'm glad to see the Biden admin embracing the progressive changes it has been able to get to, but I'm also sooo tired of being told 'we can't nominate a progressive, they'll be called a communist' when no matter who we nominate they'll be called a communist and decades of voting a harm-reduction ticket has rolled back much of the New Deal
Fetterman is 100% right.
He's basically calling out progressives for essentially not wanting power. Those progressives rather sit on the sidelines and complain about everything than ever gaining even a morsel of political power to where they could actually do something.
Falling in-line is what has led conservatives to gain enough control of the government to throw out what most considered a done deal. RvW is gone (as well as any hope for reasonable gun restrictions, as well as a host of other no nonsense laws) because Republicans know about playing the long game and know that collectively they can accomplish far more things.
It's funny that progressives love to push the idea of collective bargaining when it comes to labor relations and yet they can't figure out that collectively if they fell behind the leader of the Democrats, their voices would be much better heard.
After falling in line, we are always ignored when they get into power
Shit that’s a good comparison that frankly I’m embarrassed I hadn’t thought of. 👍
Yup. Imperfect world requires imperfect allies.
I think that's just what democracy is. Healthy democracies are pluralistic. And governing coalitions don't have 100% alignment on all issues.
Laughs in railroad workers
The railroad workers that got what they were demanding in the end?
Ah yes everything is progressives fault and not establishment dinosaurs pandering to their corporate donors .
I don't get it, either. Unless and until we have something like ranked choice voting, purity ponies that lodge "protest votes" only help the fascists. And these purity ponies seem to revel in creating more division within the left (and create more Republicans in the process), wanting to excommunicate each other over ivory tower orthodoxy, with the Oppression Olympics being one of the more egregious versions of that...
Even with ranked choice voting we will not support your war monger capitalist owned dinosaurs. A 3rd party vote is not the protest vote, voting against something like Democrats voting against Republicans is the protest vote. The act of voting for something like a 3rd party candidate is how democracy is supposed to work.
If you say so. What will result is putting more Republicans into office.
Then Democrats need better candidates and better policy
The time for that vote is in the primaries. THAT'S when you make your stand, have your protest, and try to move the party left. Otherwise you are ignoring someone that you agree with 50% of the time and helping someone you agree with 0% of the time.
Who's our primary choice against Biden? Remember when the DnC fucked Bernie?
The choice between a soft R vs a hard R is hardly a choice.
The DNC didn't "fuck over" Bernie. He lost. I voted for him in the primary, and would have loved to see him win the nomination. But he didn't, so I voted for the next best thing (and, you know, the non-fascist).
That's some revisionist history. Some of us still remember Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
These responses were referring to the 2020 election. Wasserman Schultz hasn't been DNC chair since 2016.
Go look up why she turned in her resignation.
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Keep putting more people in power that have zero interest in democracy and possibly plan to end it, and then...what?
That'll teach em!
Too bad they'll never have another chance when the GOP finally seizes power as they intend and finishes off what's left of our democracy.
But at least you made your point!
Which is exactly why we need ranked choice voting because otherwise your not expressing your choices accurately. You should be allowed to vote for your candidate of choice and also pick your poison.
Don't fight against the one thing that will help third party candidates the most.
So much this...the Democratic Party is hardly perfect, and I don't think even most Democrats would claim they are. But, again, the alternative, with the way we vote right now, is....what? Sitting this one out, hoping this time we'll really show those corporate Democrats? Voting for the Greens, which is barely even a serious party in the United States, and probably is compromised anyway?
What is the realistic option, I wonder? Sure, propose alternatives during the primary, but in the general...
It's still a bit of a Catch-22 for people who take your view. You think people should vote for the major party candidate they find least bad, while hoping for ranked choice voting so people can instead vote for the candidate they want most.
But as long as everybody votes the way you do, the parties in power have no electoral incentive at all to change the voting system. It's only when they start losing a significant portion of their voters to third parties that ranked choice starts being an appealing option to them.
I say this as someone who voted Green in 2016 (Clinton state), learned my lesson, and voted for Biden in 2020 (Trump state) and will again in 2024. I've also been much happier with Biden's presidency than I expected to be.
I am a bit encouraged that ranked choice has seen some implementation lately anyways. Hopefully it'll continue to spread. Anyone know if any new states are considering it soon?
And most of the "vote Dem or your fascist" people think political action is about voting rather than being the bare minimum. Democrat PACs fund fascist Republican candidate's primary campaigns too so...
Yes, but those are the choices that it comes down to in the general, really. What do you propose people do?
Well it depends on your own politics and goals so I can only speak from my own perspective. It's a bleak time to be a socialist because we don't have any political representation in NA really. The route I see is more mimicking what civil rights leaders were doing in the 50s-60s which was organizing labor unions. We don't have a big cultural moment like they did though and the labor movement isn't what it used to be, partly because of bipartisan views against it, union busting and policies watering it down, and we're fragmented, there's no class consciousness in today's political dialogue. Huge demonstrations like the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (where the famous "I have a dream" speech was delivered), or direct actions like the freedom rides, I don't think is really possible in today's cultural setting.
I think if you're just a regular working person you can begin by organizing and trying to unionize your workplace, but even that has risks. Maybe that just means finding coworkers who share your sentiments, but ultimately it's talking to people. I'm in a unionized workplace so what do I do next, I try and get involved and do what I can. I've also joined my workplace's DEI committee to input more solidarity and political economy-aware notions of what that means opposed to the default corporate diversity industry's ideas, I saw an opportunity there and it's been very well received by some key coworkers... So assuming you're doing what you can in your job setting, the one thing that will define your "success" in life, the embodiment of your relationship to capital and the economy. Next you can get involved politically. For me that has been things like canvassing for someone who was running for office who shared my political ideology and goals, for the most left wing party in my country. At one point a close friend ran for office so I got a glimpse of that world, and we were able to increase the party's share of the popular vote in that riding, a highly contested riding between the dominant 2 parties who spend millions of dollars there, so we all considered that a success for a third party candidate there.
I think meaningful political action is really about the context of your own life and what you're able to do. No matter what it is, it really comes down to unglamorous work and talking to people. Maybe that's collecting enough signatures for a motion against a proposed bylaw to be accepted by your municipality, canvassing your own representative by organizing people, volunteering for a candidate you agree with. It could be cultural too like supporting events and causes that your politics aligns with. I have a few direct actions I do personally on the environmental front which involve restoring habitats and bit of civil disobedience (not law-breaking). It's all work though, it's not about liking some social media post or saying "agree" under a post like this, that's all meaningless distraction. Anything done online is meaningless basically.
Most people don't do the bare minimum, so that's what we're screaming about. Gotta crawl before you can walk.
The key to getting progression policies passed is voting for Congress. Having a democratic President, whether it's Biden or someone else, doesn't matter if we only have a razor-thin majority. We just get held hostage by people like Manchin. We need solid majorities in both House and Senate to achieve anything.
Not even needed to be honest. Blue states need to swing their dick around and demand shit, but blue state politicians aren't doing anything. I know this isn't the most palatable comparison, but slave states, leading up to the Civil War, swung their dick around and got concession after concession from free state politicians even if they didn't have nearly enough votes to get legislation they wanted and could have been shut out by simple majorities. Blue states and blue state politicians really need to get some fucking cojones or the US is heading down a path it's never going to come back from.
This is literally what MAGA politicians are doing right now. I've said it before, but it's humiliating watching the Democratic Party losing "the game" by insisting on playing by the rules when the opposing team is openly bragging about cheating.
the key to getting progressive policies passed is direct pressure. widespread strikes and organizing.
dems had a majority when obama was elected and did nothing with it
They only had a majority in both houses for 2 years and still managed to get the ACA passed which was pretty significant. Even Trump couldn't undo it. Also in fairness to Obama he was focused on staving off financial collapse for a good part of his first term.
They only had a filibuster proof majority for a few months actually.
The ACA was a Heritage Foundation health care plan that acts as a de facto subsidy for private health insurance. The best we ever get is still conservative.
im not impressed with them passing a conservative healthcare plan from the 90s that is basically just free money for healthcare companies and still leaves millions of americans without healthcare. the dems didnt even stave off financial collapse they bailed out huge banks and other corporations while doing absolutely nothing for the american people
California has a bullet proof super majority and they can't provide a livable wage, affordable housing, universal healthcare which includes dental and mental healthcare, or address homelessness other than hiding them from view. If a state like that can't provide, why should be trust it to happen at the federal level? Dems could hold everything but 1% of Congress and they would blame that 1% for everything they didn't do
I live in CA. Our homeless people have Medi-Cal, which includes dental, vision, and mental care. We have a zoning issue that the NIMBYs aren't budging on, though I think I have found a workaround involving right of first refusal. Once we fix the zoning issue, our housing costs will come down dramatically.
Also, remember we only "own" about 1/3 of the land out here. Most of the state is Federal land operated by the BLM
K I'll go tell the tent cities that everything is actually going really well for them lol.
Private healthcare loves the ACA + Medi-Cal cause it keeps their costs high and guarantees tax dollars can pay it. These companies often sell off their debt for fractions of it's value cause they know they're not going to get it all back, and they only need a small percentage to turn a ridiculous profit. This is the system these tax scheme substitutes for public healthcare help maintain.
Dude, compare California to a non Democratic majority state, not to the perfect utopia you want.
Of course California has problems. If they solved those problems, there would be other problems.
But California has massively fewer problems due to the untouchable Democratic supermajority in the state.
Parts of California even have ranked choice voting.
The major difference between the federal government and state governments is the fact that the federal government is the source of all money. They can spend it into existence. California cannot.
Proof positive of failed democratic policy. Do you need more examples in other states?
Look, I get the Dems are our only vehicle for Progressive policies becoming reality because I know we're never going to move away from FPTP voting any time soon. I just don't like having to go along with the same corporate greed. It feels very two steps forward, one step back.
And it is. But that still equates to a step forward. Voting red is a legit step (or three) backwards.
Voting red is getting your legs broken so you can never step again. The fact that they tried a fucking coup thst every one of those motherfuckers would have gone with if successful should not be forgotten.
Cause he's a fuckin mummy John. We are tired of electing boomers that don't understand fuckin computers.
Selling us a tube TV in the year of flat screens.
He's older than Boomers. He's technically one of the last "
GreatestSilent Generation."Silent generation, the Greatest were in the wars
Good point. Forgot about that one, lol
They really were silent or am I thinking of the forgotten generation?
There are flat screen CRTs
Primaries are for ideas and ideals. General elections are for harm reduction.
Rave Acts of the 90's. Joe is only swimming because his opponents are literal Neanderthals.
CHIP, IRA, ARPA, ending the Afghanistan war
Biden is bringing the economic stimulus that we've been begging for since 2008
Oh, because i support progressive people, not union busters
This president made an empty promise about continuing to work for paid sick leave after preventing a strike by railworkers at the end of 2022. Except, that it actually worked. Almost every union did get paid sick leave for its members within six months aided by continued pressure from the White House.
He's a pretty lousy union buster.
"You can't strike, but I will try to talk to your boss to get you some of what you desire" is still union busting. The union doesn't have the power anymore.
Telling workers they can't fight for their own rights, and have to wait for politicians to do it for them us not progressive, and its not pro-labor. It's on a long list of swiftly festering bandages that only stave off death for a little while. If we don't empower our workers, we stifle them. Even if we bribe them candy when they demand steak.
I dont really blame you, theyve done quite the PR on this. There's an electrical worker union, with a branch dealing with railroad electricians. They supported the pre-strike deal the railroad companies offered, they likely already had things like sick leave. If youve seen reports on reactions of rail workers to the post-strike-busting situation, you very likely only saw quotes from this union. Of electrical workers.
It's a dick move to downplay their big win. Here's another news release about a deal for sick days that affected eight unions: https://www.up.com/media/releases/paid-sick-leave-nr-230322.htm
This is literally the rail company whose workers were prevented from striking
Yes. Your point? Do you dispute that the listed unions got their sick days?
What they wanted? No i dont think they did.
You have a source that disputes that they got sick days?
https://www.levernews.com/amazon-gets-huge-contract-despite-bidens-union-pledge/
Then he's not listening
Progressives that said "Joe Biden was a pile of shit" before he was elected have been like "he's shit, but maybe not as shit as I thought"
Before the circular firing squad starts up its probably good to recognize that Joe Biden is shit and the electoral college is shit and this bullshit will continue until we get real election reforms.
They are prioritizing principles over practicality. Which is a great way to hand power to the greater evil.
Because Biden could have way better positions on healthcare, remote work and student loan forgiveness.
ITT: people who defend Manchin every single time he votes against his party expecting perfect lockstep from those he keeps betraying.
Edit: I summoned one.
Look, another person intentionally misrepresenting this opinion.
One more time: People aren't defending Manchin, they're pointing out that he's not passing this shit on his own. That there are 50 other senators that are pushing this shit, yet people blame the Democratic party and completely ignore the existence of those other people.
Because the Democrstic Party did just about everything it could to try and have it be Senator Conor Lamb. Or by effect, a Senator Oz.
For me Biden represents much of that faction of the Democratic Party. Hence I have trouble assuring Biden my vote even before the primary.
It's about getting 50%+1 in a democracy, right (or at least it should be)? So at some point the choices should come down to a binary to guarantee a 50%+1 outcome. However, the right candidate in a representative democracy and building of that 50%+1 should be done either with rank choiced voting or 2 round elections (either with a primary as we do it now or with multiple parties in the first round, that winnows everything down to 2 candidates). And an important role of the primaries is to get the resulting candidate to negotiate and build a coalition unifying the the 50%+1 coalition. So that deal that Biden and Sanders struck after Biden won the primary was huge. In the case of the left, the primary helps move the winning candidate left of where they might otherwise be. It's why I was ecstatic to have Bernie run in 2016 and 2020 (It puled Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden to the left). And I think it's bullshit that the Democratic party puts its thumb on the scale.
So if you have a left-right linear spectrum constituting 100% of the electorate, there are obviously different 50%+1 coalitions that can be made. Joe Manchin or Conor Lamb wants to be at the center of that 50%+1 coalition. Progressives obviously have an anathema to that and want that 50%+1 coalition to include everyone from the left end of the spectrum to the right of that up to 50%+1. Unfortunately, with institutions like the Senate and electoral college and whatnot, getting that 50%+1 coalition requires building it with Joe Manchin or Conor Lamb. Otherwise, there is no majority.
So while we fixate on Biden and whatnot, Biden and us need to focus on local elections, local referendums, and creating a Manchin-Sinema-Conor Lamb (or his equivalent) proof majority in the House and Senate. It's obvious to me with several of Biden's moves, he's highly responsive to popular will and the votes available, regardless of what his own or his donors' proclivities are. So if we want paid family leave and assistance with early child care and a pathway to medicare for all and expanded child tax credit, we need to be focused on winning all of these more local elections. Yes, having a popular candidate at the top of the ballot would help, but if you look at Biden's polling, it's the left end of the spectrum that's keeping him from being closer to 50% popularity. Instead of getting angry that we didn't get all this stuff when Manchin scuttled everything, we should be focused on building majorities that don't need him.
If John Fetterman hadn't had the stroke and the resulting depression, I'd be ecstatic about having him run for the presidency. Hopefully, he'll recover by and be in good shape by 2028. We need a blue collar - union friendly presidential candidate to unify and build that 50%+1 coalition. I was hoping it was Sherrod Brown in Ohio in 2016 and 2020, but he voted against the Rail Worker strike and I think it's taking its toll on his Senate election chances in Ohio.
Paying attention to those crucial local elections: Biden and the Democratic Party leadership continually campaigned against progressive candidates in their primaries and publicly and intentionally insist on how important it is to them for the Republican Party to be strong.
So for many who don't support Biden it is about the Democratic Party effort to preserve the conservative coalition with the Manchin-Sinema corporate landscape.
For some it appears Biden and the Democratic Party's core leadership would sooner lose to Republicans than support, let alone champion, the progressive movement. And so they don't feel the need or compulsion to support Biden as a result.
And going further back in time some remember Obama's supermajority and trifecta amounting to very little progressive action whatsoever. So the idea of voting harder i hope of a better majority often rings hollow.
These are factors I would say are being weighed when judging whether Biden deserves support even before a primary.
Yeah, but that Obama super majority in the Senate lasted one year and it was a different time, when Democratic voters and the Democratic party was less liberal than it is now. Hell, compare Biden in his 2008 presidential campaign to his 2020 one. And just look at how much filibuster rules have changed since then.
Anyways, my main point is that you have to remind Biden and Manchin that they need you and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the coalition too and that they're not going to get much done (like immigration reform) with the two "moderate" Republican senators left in the Senate (Collins and Murkowski).
And yeah, sure Biden and Pelosi and all of them (the Democratic Party apparatus) weighed against the progressive candidates in the primaries and still are. It's your job to beat them and show that the bulk of our 50%+1 coalition is behind the progressive rather than the moderate. It means fundraising to fight the corporate donors and volunteering for these campaigns, going from door to door to get people to turn out and vote for the progressive candidate in the primary.
And the reality is that without Manchin, we'd have never gotten KBJ, judicial and executive appointments, the provisions in the infrastructure bill and the inflation reduction act. Did Manchin-Sinema fuck us? Yeah, they did. We could have prevented the rise in childhood poverty we're seeing now if it weren't for those two. People would be a lot more excited for Biden and the Democrats. But it's our job to get a majority that doesn't need those two or those of their ilk in the system we have (and yes, change the system along the way, so that we can have things like popular referendum, etc.).
Those two? Shit, the senate vote in the last Congress to extend the child tax credit was 1-97. Warren didn't vote as a progressive leaving Bernie the lone vote in support. And that was the number one factor in reducing the problem.
It can be hard to maintain support for a one-sided coalition for too long. Eventually people start to break. Their support for Biden becomes just like Biden's support for his own public option plan: disappearing.
That's what I'm saying. If we only have a majority that depends on Manchin and Sinema, how are we supposed to pass the public option? How do you get a majority without them?
And the reality is that passing the public option isn't simple. Look at the institutional holders of three of the top insurance companies (United Health, Cigna, and Humana):
https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?symb=UNH&subView=institutional
https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?symb=CI&subView=institutional
https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?symb=HUM&subView=institutional
All those mutual funds hold a lot of people's pensions/retirement. So if you pass medicare for all, what do you do with those investors. It's not just rich fat cats, but also folks looking to retire.
I wish we'd have a real discussion beyond medicare is more comprehensive, cheaper (I don't think a lot of people realize that you still owe 20% of part A bills and have to pay a premium every month for part B, and still have to deal with paying for drugs as part of Part D, and that medicare gap is only available through private companies (forget medicare advantage), and patient friendly. We have to figure out how to handle the consequences of essentially nationalizing an entire industry.
And it's not just the insurance companies their investors that you have to battle here. You have to deal with big pharma who are doing everything possible to block medicare from using their market power to negotiate lower drug costs. And this whole private system leads to such ridiculous allocation of spending. You usually see big Pharma spending more money on SGA (https://www.fiercepharma.com/special-reports/top-10-pharma-drug-brand-ad-spenders-2022) than R&D. Yet they'll argue that getting drugs through the three stages of clinical trials is really expensive and justifies the prices they place on these drugs.
Of course if you get rid of that inefficiency, it's a whole bunch of advertisers and executives out of the job, and they ostensibly spend less money in the economy or find jobs in a different field. It's all a giant, interconnected web, and we're just trying to redistribute the composition of it.
I often point to the Kaiser Permanente poll on the popularity of Medicare for all. Sure people are for it. But then when you tell them that their private insurance would go away, favoribility drops to 30%. Can you imagine if you told them their pension funds or retirement is invested in health insurance companies or big pharma? See figure 9: https://www.kff.org/slideshow/public-opinion-on-single-payer-national-health-plans-and-expanding-access-to-medicare-coverage/
And I agree with you about feeling the coalition's one sided. But I think Biden is trying with his executive and judicial appointments which only have to go through the Senate. And you really have to walk that fine line between negotiating a better deal/agenda reflective of your needs/wants and not being taken for granted (something the progressive caucus in the House did a terrible job at in negotiating with Manchin) and letting the right extreme coalition run everything. And one of the ways to do that is to run your candidate in the primary (we focus too much on the presidential, when we should be looking at more local representatives too), working for them or volunteering for them, and engage in dialogue that reaches their ears about your demands if they want you to be part of that coalition.
Is it just me or does this thumbnail make Joe look super super old?
It's not you or the thumb nail
Lmao
I'm still soured by how the primary shook out in 2020. Before any votes were cast, all everyone said about all the candidates were that anyone could beat Trump. Bernie won the first 3 races, and the Democratic establishment fought anyway they could to kill the movement, including pressuring flailing campaigns to back out. Biden finally won and the only message is for the left wing of the party to get in line. Kind of a hard pill to swallow when the Democrats claimed to be the party of the youth, but the youth voted 80%+ for Bernie in the primary. Ended up voting Green in 2020. Will I do so again in '24? Who knows, but at this point it isn't looking good. I don't like that the right wing of the Democrats (center-right overall) expects the left to follow along no matter what they do.
I'm not sure I buy this whole "third party votes are wasted votes" or "third party votes are a vote for the opposition". The US system heavily heavily biases towards having a two party system, but third parties exist, and just because Democrats and Republicans are the two major parties right now, doesn't mean they will be in the future. The Whigs were one of the two major parties for 25 years of US history, even winning the Presidency a few times, but now they're not. It took people not willing to accept the party line and jumping ship to change that, which again the system biases against, but it still happened. Democrats aren't the end-all-be-all of lefty politics. The next left wing party won't be the end-all-be-all either. Democrats have no incentive to change the current system. By continuing to vote for them, whether you believe it or not, you're approving and perpetuating the behavior. It isn't a useful method of change to say "I don't agree with anything the Democrats say, but that's the world we're in". That's how you end up in a situation where 70% of the country supports universal healthcare, but only 5-6 members of Congress do. Voting for a further left party than the Democrats will cause the Democrats to wise up to what their traditional base wants.
Politics in Democracy is not a passive system. Passivity leads to what we have now, two parties that write the rules for the states and the governments that represent the interests of almost no one, but have convinced us that they're the only and best options. There are agents of the Democrats currently in jail for breaking election law in their efforts to keep the Greens off the ballot. I'm sure the same is true for Republicans. Don't tell them its okay by giving them your vote. Don't give in to the political version of the Paradox of Thrift.
Whether you buy it or not, at least for the presidency, the US is realistically a two party system. A vote for 3rd party is a wasted vote, because you certainly must have a preference in which of the two real options you'd rather have.
Voting 3rd party is selfish. You're willing to let the worse option win because you want to make a "statement"
And your statement translates to "we can easily manipulate these 3rd party voters away from our rival by back channel funding our oppositions redheaded step child"
And this is definitely why we haven't needed any parties but the federalists and the anti-federalists.
The parties only change when one of them just totally shits the bed. Then they're usually replaced by a party that kind of does the same things but doesn't seem to stink as much as the last one. Sometimes their opposition moves toward the center enough that the new party springs from their base instead.
At this point, the Democrats shitting the bed is very realistically the end of democracy, so instead of getting a shakeup and a New Left we'll just end up with increasingly restrictive rules on who gets to participate in elections and increasingly questionable vote counting. But if you want to shake things up by just completely destroying the Republicans and hoping the Democrats (who are kind of suckers for "converting" Republicans) become the new conservative party, that I can get behind. The Republicans are already in shaky territory as they get more and more repulsive while dwindling in number. They're dangerous because of that, but they legitimately could fall apart if they keep getting destroyed in elections while the diehards refuse to believe they need to change.
Even more than that, if you don't vote the way your state is going, you're wasting your vote. For example, if I'm a Dem in a Red state, I have to vote Red, otherwise, you know, I'm wasting my vote! You may think you're making a "statement", but it's just a failure to accept reality.
That's not how it works. At all.
A few percentage movement to the underdog side in a solid state indicates there's potential for a swing in future elections, which means the underdog party may funnel more money and campaign tour time to said State.
But sure, keep justifying wasting your vote, and not doing the one very easy thing you can do to fight fascism.
Edit - I want to make something clear. By all means, support your independent / 3rd party candidates on the local level, where they actually have a chance. Support their continued attempts to rise. We need to break the 2 party system, eventually.
But don't waste your vote on the battle line. President, senate, congress. We need every last vote in the preferred 2 party candidate. These fucking matter.
Until you get a real 3rd party candidate making governor, senator, congress, there's literally zero chance they can win a major election.
LOL. You people are just so predictably. You know, history shows that the more people vote, the more left things lean. But go on yelling from the top of your plastic soap box that people who don't vote the "right" way are throwing their vote away. You'd do far more good trying to get people to vote.
I'll keep winning no matter what, while you are the true vote waster!
Three issues: There is almost no state so red or blue that it couldn't swing with ~10% shift to the other party.
There are plenty of local elections that will not go the same direction as the state, and they have more effect locally than the president.
Your vote is "wasted" by voting for who's going to win. Voting for the winner, against your judgment, doesn't make your vote more valuable. If anything, it makes it less valuable. The only time your vote really matters (intellectually) is when it's used to swing a vote opposite of expectation.
Who gives a fuck about (intellectually)?
Because that's the only way a vote is wasted. It is probably least valuable voting for who is expected to win, but second least used voting for who doesn't stand a chance.
Anything other than a vote for one of the two leading parties in a swing state is a waste
Yeah, pretty much. There are other means to do things in favor of other groups, but for voting it's only between the two (in most elections).
You do you. I just support more people voting. I'm too old now to continue walking the precincts to try to get the vote out every election. You seem to have a flexible judgment of when a vote counts and when it doesn't. Pretty fucked up way of looking at things. In my humble opinion at least.
I don't think it's fucked up. I think it's realistic. We need to change the way representation works in the US, but it's built and manufactured to support the status quo, so that's the way it works.
Actions outside of voting though, there are plenty available. Expecting voting to be the thing to make things work is probably faulty.
I also expect the republican party to come crashing down soon. My expectation is that the democratic party takes the place of the right wing party and something else takes the left. At that point, things will change. Right now though, status quo is the voting options.
Maybe after like a decade, after losing a few presidencies in a row.
But we don't have time for that. The Republicans plan to effectively end democracy if they win the House.
First Past the Post is the unfortunate reality, and yes it's fucking us hard.
The Green Party received a quarter of 1 percent of total votes in 2020. The third best showing they’ve ever had. Four years prior Jill Stein received an entire 1% higher than that against probably the two least liked candidates of all time. They ain’t it.
LOL all that and you're still voting Green party? You know, the ones that got us trump in 2016 and are Russian schills ? Get lost bro
Very well said. And this method of strategically protesting the status quo has awarded better outcomes in NYC and got NY, Minnesota, Alaska and some othera to have ranked choice. But we can't just do that from nothing on the federal scale. We're gonna get ranked choice voting federally by leveraging third party State reps. And Senators to change the constitution.
That's not true. The numbers show otherwise. When it came to primaries there just wasn't the turnout Bernie supporters needed to get his name on the ticket. You can't have it both ways.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Sen. John Fetterman has a message for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party: get in line behind President Joe Biden.
He continues to recover from an auditory processing disorder caused by a stroke that happened during the 2022 campaign.
Both Sanders and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York have also endorsed the incumbent president, despite their occasional criticisms from the left.
"At the end of the day, like, do you think Donald Trump is going to be talking about issues and, you know, his white papers?"
Fetterman also recalled a conversation with Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in which he said he would remain "neutral on all of that," despite his previous suggestion that he would support Gallego, along with the fact that his top political strategist is now working for the Arizona congressman.
Last week, during a similar briefing with reporters, Fetterman referred to the potential impeachment of President Biden as a "big circlejerk on the fringe right."
The original article contains 434 words, the summary contains 159 words. Saved 63%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
The fact that we can't endorse him without comparing him to the dumpster fire on the opposite side is why we don't like him. If "better than Trump" is all you've got going for you, we might as well vote for a pile of wet socks.
He promised not to upset the capitalist apple cart, and he hasn't. He's not a progressive.
Strong disagree. I've found Biden to far, far exceed my expectations for him. I've been very happy with his presidency, above and beyond the fact that he's not Trump.
That said, I'm curious which specific policies of his you disagree with. I have several, but I'd like to see yours.
Yeah I wouldn't call him progressive by any reasonable definition of the word, but he's helped pass some of the most consequential legislation of our lifetime, and he did it while pulling the economy out of a dumpster fire tailspin and into an improbable soft landing, and also getting us onto the other side of an actual plague. He's been far more effective than I ever imagined he'd be. I didn't vote for him in the 2020 primary, but I'll damn sure vote to reelect him. My only point of contention is that I wish he'd dump Harris and organize a kind of VP primary to pick another running mate. If he dies in office, I worry that she's just not up to the task.
Experience Experience Experience. We needed an adult. We needed someone to come in, clean up a bunch of messes by making some tough calls and not just waiting around for perfect. He’s greatly exceeded that imo.
Is there a single Republican candidate that progressives would support over Biden?
I look at it as Biden will pass any progressive legislation given to him; he isn't the problem. Instead, I would look at the tons of legislator positions and ask them what they are doing to be progressive at the state and local levels. Lock those people in so on the next election, Democratic presidential candidates will need progressive support.
And prep the House and Senate so progressive legislation can get passed. Biden has only vetoed 6 bills in office; I don't see him being the logjam for progressive legislation.
Lol no one wants to answer your first question.
Biden doesn’t want to pass progressive legislation, if he had any inclination towards progressive he wouldn’t have stood against union railroad workers.
He’s a right leaning centrist through and through, it’s just that in America that looks “progressive” when we’re used our right wing party being progressively more fascist over the last few decades
The bill he passed went through with a veto proof majority in the Senate and there is no indication he wouldn't have passed the bill to enforce union demands if it got to his desk.
Why not challenge the Democrats in Congress who voted to end the strike?
I see Reddit's r/Politics hard liberal cast has migrated wholesale and now drowns out lemmy's leftists.
Duhh
I'll vote for whatever candidate aligns with my views, I'm not playing the numbers game, that's not for me to play. I can and will vote for whoever I want and no one is going to convince me that I'm "throwing my vote away" by voting third party.
You know you are being closed minded and irrational when you say "no one is going to convince me of ____".
Way to keep yourself from growing as a person and learning new things!
How about instead of trying to scare or guilt people into voting for middle of the road, we allow rank choice and let people vote for who they want.
"allow rank choice" voters have to fight for it. Strategic voting on local and state level has gotten it in a small handful of places. But we don't have it federally, yet.