deaddmwalking wrote:I find that interesting. I vote for Democratic candidates, I donated a significant amount of money to Act Blue. I support eliminating private prisons and the prison-industrial complex, I support the equal rights amendment and full protection of rights for sexual orientation, sex, and gender. I believe that taxes on the rich are far too low and that for-profit health care is an evil scourge that is destroying lives in this country. Clearly, 'conservative' means something else to Mguy than it does to the rest of the world.
Those positions makes you conservative in the rest of the world. Also in the US.
"Woah now hold on, I think a tax rate of 22% on the rich is just too low, it should be 27% like it was when Obama was president." isn't the mark of true leftism you think it is.
Telling me you donate to Henry Cuellar isn't a mark of you not being a conservative.
Joe Biden currently thinks the tax rate should be higher than it is now but LOWER than during the Obama admin and he was you one true primary candidate because of his supreme COATTAILS that would lead to sweeping democratic legislatures (how did that turn out by the way? Has being wrong ever caused you to rethink anything?)
deaddmwalking wrote:It's fine that you want to have a safe-space for extremism, but I just want to point out that you're far ahead of what the rest of the country is comfortable with. Demanding that the rest of the world recognize that you're right won't happen with this kind of circle jerk.
DeadDM ignoring that Grek is literally telling him that it's not extremism, but I guess when you feel the need to make posts criticizing the existence of a thread you refuse to read it's not actually that weird to keep ignoring everything in the thread.
No one is criticizing Joe Biden for not implementing or fighting for the policy that 70% of the country and 90% of democrats supports, Medicare For All. He's being criticized for things like saying that the tax rate should be lower than it was in 2016! It's not extremism to think that the the 2016 tax rate was the minimum for a democratic president to aspire to!
deaddmwalking wrote:Which ultimately means that you're only right if you can convince a significant majority of Americans to agree with you (oh, and they must be geographically concentrated to ensure at least 51% of the population in those states where they exist, but also must be geographically spread out to ensure they represent a majority it both urban and rural states). Which isn't to say that it's impossible but it is impossible for the moment.
This is so fucking stupid. 70% of the population wants M4A. Like 90% thought the tax rate should be higher on the rich than it was in 2016. This is why my signature is about how the US isn't a democracy. If your commitment to believing the US is a democracy then you have to make up increasingly convoluted reasons for ignoring what people actually want to justify the outcomes of a political process that throws their opinions in the trash in favor of what oligarchs and consultants want.
General elections and primary elections are both fake bullshit where the candidates are picked in advance by the extremely rich and established political figures, and then the board is tilted as hard as possible against anyone who might pose even the slightest threat to the people who currently hold power. Chuck Schumer picked Amy McGrath who had already lost an election for a district to the left of the state of Kentucky for the Kentucky Senate election because he thought "I'm a woman fighter pilot who bombs brown people" would let him rake in money from donations and that could be spent elsewhere (after McGrath blows a huge chunk of it losing in Kentucky). She spent 40 million dollars to barely squeak out a primary win against Charles Booker who spent 700k. Then she spent her general election funds running TV ad campaigns in Ohio about how people should vote for her over McConnell because unlike Mitch McConnell she would work WITH Trump. Unsurprisingly, she lost in a landslide. But all the money that was earned by joint donations still showed up and all the money she has left over can be donated to other democrats in future elections so who cares right?
But the thing is, this is every primary election! The DCCC steps on the scale all over the country to maximize the number of shitty candidates they can keep in charge because shitty right wing democrats will never pressure Nancy Pelosi to do anything she doesn't want to do. Obama steps in to crown his VP as the primary winner with backroom deals because he's rich and he loves rich people and there can never be a threat to that allowed to prosper.
It's just flatly not true that we need to "convince a majority of americans." They are already convinced of all our policy goals. They just don't get a say in who gets to be president or Speaker. That's decided by the rich and powerful just full on smashing the scale beneath their boot.
deaddmwalking wrote:Biden hasn't even been sworn in yet. Until we get through the Inauguration, I wouldn't expect Biden to say anything that would encourage an armed revolt. Those types of things are a lot easier to handle if you're the Commander in Chief. Further, making real policy changes is easier if you have control of the Senate.
If you think that providing extra ammunition for attack ads NOW is the smart decision, well, maybe that explains why you don't have a career as a political consultant.
This is such a funny and stupid thing to say. 1) Biden is appointing cabinet officials! If on January 20th he announces "haha just kidding" and rolls out an entirely different cabinet than the one he announced then sure, I'll be eating crow. But I'm somewhat skeptical that will happen. 2) "Wow time out you can't expect the things Biden and his team say to predict what they will do!" No fucking wonder you just blindly vote for whatever obscene shithead you know the name of in the primary! if you believe it is impossible to predict future outcomes and that all candidates are identical I guess nothing but name recognition matters! But that seems like a really bad method for evaluating politicians.
3) "ammunition for attack ads" has got to be the funniest fucking dog shit democrat brain thing ever.
Bernie Sanders was filibustering the NDAA (military funding) bill to get 2k checks to people and then basically the entire democratic senate voted with McConnell to quash the filibuster so they could pay Raytheon. The reason people defend this is that if they don't then "Republicans will attack Warnock as anti military! This stops that!" Meanwhile, as soon that filibuster ended Kelly Loeffler, a current senator campaigning for the senate, left her job at the senate to go to a campaign event where she said that Warnock is part of a child sexual assault gang. Now a few things here: a) Damn, seems like maybe keeping her in the Senate away from campaign events would help don't you think? b) If Kelly Loeffler thought that calling Warnock anti Military would help her do you think she whether or not the democrats vote to end a filibuster is going to change whether she does? Because spoiler alert, there wasn't any evidence he was part of a fucking child sexual assault ring and she said that! and finally,
c) MAYBE just MAYBE instead of deciding you can't do any good or popular thing because someone will run attack ads (that they will run anyway) you can actually build support by talking about the good popular things you are going to do!
Now, the reason this is hard for Biden is of course because he doesn't want to do any good or popular things, but if democrats wanted to actually do good things, good ELECTORAL politics would not be to hide that from the public.
If the outcome of the Georgia primaries decided whether Biden did the Green New Deal, or M4A, or an aggressive covid relief bill, or even a Public Option, the operative thing to do would be to TELL PEOPLE THAT! Not hide it because you are worried about attack ads! ALL THOSE THINGS ARE INSANELY POPULAR!
And spoiler alert, CLOSING THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS IS ALSO FUCKING POPULAR. Biden's staff telling people "we aren't going to make any changes on Trump's border policy for an indeterminate time period for no explicit reason except that borders are complicated and complicated things scare us" didn't actually defuse a single fucking republican campaign ad because no republican ad team is making decisions based on an advisor saying a qualified statement in "support" of their policies. But also, even if it did, who cares! I want 100% of the republican attack ads to be them showing Biden's staff listing promises to day 1 close concentration camps because that will HELP DEMOCRATS and for fucks sake why not run some of your own ads about how you are going to do it!
You can tell that Joe Biden even AGREES with me about the electoral consequences of saying he will close the concentration camps because HE SAID THAT WHILE CAMPAIGNING FOR PRESIDENT. It was only AFTER he won that his staff started explaining that he actually won't.
And the reason is simple. Joe Biden is not signaling to the American public after the election. He's signaling to his donors that he will make very few changes and only after consulting them.