Biden clenches the nomination.

[Saelune]

Given her low content post, I don't think she's actually being serious. I think she's trying to bait people. She's probably from 4chan. No one who supports left wing policies in good faith talks this way. It's like a caricature of a leftist.

Stuff like this assures me of my judgement of people.

 

[Saelune]

I said he was the best, I didn't say he was right all the time. He's bound by his politics, but even a casual reading of the situation tells anyone that 'vote blue no matter who (they rape)' isn't a smart strategy.

Then admit you are not a Bernie supporter.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Then admit you are not a Bernie supporter.

No, not unless you admit that you're not a Dem supporter, since by your own admission you're only voting for them because you don't like Republicans, not that you agree with all of their positions and policies.

 

[Saelune]

No, not unless you admit that you're not a Dem supporter, since by your own admission you're only voting for them because you don't like Republicans, not that you agree with all of their positions and policies.

I have never claimed to be 100% in support of Democrats policies and views point for point. I have constantly emphasized the aspect of compromise to oppose the greater evils and threats, that has been like, the main thing I have been arguing for pages upon pages.

You accuse me of hiding something I wear on my sleeve.

Biden was not my first, or even second choice. I wanted Warren, then Bernie. I prefer Hillary over Biden, and Obama over both. I find myself very aligned with AOC, and if you notice, she is voting for Biden too.

So, now do you admit you are not a Bernie supporter?

 

[crimson5pheonix]

I have never claimed to be 100% in support of Democrats policies and views point for point. I have constantly emphasized the aspect of compromise to oppose the greater evils and threats, that has been like, the main thing I have been arguing for pages upon pages.

You accuse me of hiding something I wear on my sleeve.

Biden was not my first, or even second choice. I wanted Warren, then Bernie. I prefer Hillary over Biden, and Obama over both. I find myself very aligned with AOC, and if you notice, she is voting for Biden too.

So, now do you admit you are not a Bernie supporter?

No, because that's my point. Bernie is the best choice of the lot, that doesn't mean I have to mindlessly agree with him on everything. So why you're trying to say I'm not a Bernie supporter is baffling. It's a non-point.

 

[Nick Calandra]

Guys, get the thread back on track, it's getting much too personal. I've instructed the mods to lock it down if the jabs continue.

Thanks!

 

[crimson5pheonix]

A former neighbor of Joe Biden's accuser Tara Reade has come forward to corroborate her sexual-assault account, saying Reade discussed the allegations in detail in the mid-1990s

Former Biden staffer Tara Reade says the Democratic presidential nominee sexually assaulted her in 1993. Reade's former neighbor tells Insider that Reade confided in her about the allegations at the time.

www.businessinsider.com

Tara Reade's neighbor corroborates her story, and a former intern confirms parts of it.

 

[Schadrach]

Do you consider Biden left-wing?

No, he's the same kind of neoliberal mess that Democrats typically run. Which is why the odds are against him winning. His main voter base is the "anyone but Trump" voter, and those aren't numerous enough to win on. What will happen instead is low Dem turnout, because while Republicans vote like clockwork, Dems don't. So you either try to build loyalty to party as a core value (like the Republicans) or you offer them something they want to vote for, not merely that they're afraid not to vote against.

Ask yourself this: You are the average Appalachian, Southern, or Midwestern voter. "He's not Trump" is definitively not enough to get you to go out and vote for Biden. What is Biden offering to get you to be bothered to go vote at all, let alone for him?

Its not a series of smaller questions. If you believe that, you have fallen for the propaganda of the bigots.

That's a dodge. You'll notice I threw out a series of examples, ones that are in a domain I know you think about. A nice small starting point before going into more thorny things. Those examples should be *easy* questions to answer, but you dodged them. Consider why.

Equal means equal.

That's a tautology. Again, define equal in detail. Or at least point to places where law or policy explicitly aren't. I can, and you'd probably fight me over them. In fact, the two questions I started with "Is it OK" are in reference to actual US law and government policy.

Biden was not my first, or even second choice. I wanted Warren, then Bernie. I prefer Hillary over Biden, and Obama over both. I find myself very aligned with AOC, and if you notice, she is voting for Biden too.

And my order was Yang>Bernie>Warren>Questioning why the Dems are trying to lose. Dems only do well when they mobilize the base, when they get someone who gets people to want to go out and vote for them, rather than merely feeling obligated to. Biden is very much not that. Bernie very much was.

Dem's best chance to actually win was Bernie, then Warren, then it stops really mattering as everyone else is either too uninspiring or too unlikely to win the primary to matter.

 

[deleted20220709]

DELETED

 

[Schadrach]

I agree with your reasoning but disagree with your conclusions. Bernie was a watershed, his core voters would probably follow Bernie to hell if he said he had a chance of winning an election there, but the rest of the democratic voter base thinks he's too radical at best and a dangerous commie-lover at worst. The reason Biden clenched the nomination was because large parts of the democratic voter base thinks he's a good choice. The problem with those parts are that they are the boomer dems, the voters who aren't much seen in the public discourse (because they don't do internet savvy like the younger generations mainly) and prefers a traditional democratic candidate.

For Bernie, you balance that by giving him a VP and possibly some cabinet choices that give the appearance of reigning him in a bit. That he's not completely out there and is definitely willing to listen to that demographic.

Likewise, the only way Biden has a serious chance is if he picks someone far enough to his left that it gives the impression that he actually intends to do something or at least listen to people who want to do something. And no, "I commit that I will, in fact, appoint a, pick a woman to be vice president" is not doing that. "Woman" is not a political stance. Which woman he picks is key.

 

[Tireseas]

I agree with your reasoning but disagree with your conclusions. Bernie was a watershed, his core voters would probably follow Bernie to hell if he said he had a chance of winning an election there, but the rest of the democratic voter base thinks he's too radical at best and a dangerous commie-lover at worst. The reason Biden clenched the nomination was because large parts of the democratic voter base thinks he's a good choice. The problem with those parts are that they are the boomer dems, the voters who aren't much seen in the public discourse (because they don't do internet savvy like the younger generations mainly) and prefers a traditional democratic candidate.

Biden is very much traditional, he's safe and non-threatening to the large swathes of the democratic party that were born in the 40's and 50's and will remain an important voter bloc for at least a decade until they start dying off and getting replaced. They don't make as much noise as younger voters but they are also not as fickle as younger voters. When the boomer voters get a candidate they like (and they like Biden waaaaay more then they ever liked Hillary) they will turn out to a man to support their Man. So you are right in your reasoning that the Dems need an inspiring candidate to mobilize the voters, but I'd argue that Biden is exactly that. He'll mobilize the Dem voters that would whiff out if Hillary, Bernie or Warren got the nomination, the voters who want a trustworthy, proven man of their own generation to lead the charge for traditional democratic values and policies. The other voters, the women and minorities, are sufficiently intimidated by Trump that they'll likely show up to vote in large numbers any way, because they have way more too lose with four more years of Trump then they do if a moderate, ineffectual Democrat wins.

I know it sounds kind of stupid, but Biden was probably the most tactical candidate possible for the Democratic party. He's popular enough with the boomers to ensure their votes and everyone else will fall in line because more Trump is such an atrocious possibility that they'll vote for any Democrat, even one as grey and stuffy as Biden. In essence, Biden is the Trump of democratic voters. Where Trump mobilized a lot of reactionary republicans that weren't being represented by "traditional" rep candidates, Biden is mobilizing a lot of usually passive, unheard dem voters because he's the boomer friendly choice.

There's also a really important part that's not being spoken: Those voters also overwhelmingly African American , who, at least in older generations (younger generations are a bit more mixed), have a tradition of selecting the most electable candidate who isn't going to completely screw over their interests. which often means favoring older, male, whiter, center-oriented candidates like Biden and the Clintons, largely because black voters have power in the Democratic party while the Republican party has been operating a Southern Strategy campaign since 1968. In 2008, polling indicated that Obama was not doing well with black voters prior to his win in Iowa, after which he made fairly serious gains in the black vote. The win there was a signal to this key voting block that he was electable in ways that previous black candidates hadn't been, which reduced the inertia within that key vote that favors those majoritarian factors. If voters don't think you're going to win in a general, they don't have the primary reason to vote for you.

 

[Tireseas]

[continued because I keep getting errors]

Contrast this with today, and you can see why likely progressive stalwarts weren't making the same progress that Biden did with more-successful moderates. Sanders, unlike Obama's fundamentally non-ideological message of unity, was all about hard-line progressive ideology and conflict, particularly with the party itself (the party that African Americans make up a demographic and cultural core of (see sect 3 in link)). Warren was hobbled by her gender and a technocratic approach to politics that generally turns off a lot of voters (as well as several major missteps that she never got out of the shadow of such as the infamous blood test). Harris (yes, she was progressive despite a deliberate narrative that overlooked the realities of being a black politician and AG where discretion is much more limited than most realize) was hobbled both by her gender and race.

It's also one of the reasons why the near constant complaint about "the party/establishment rigged it for Biden" and other messaging should be seriously examined by those spouting it out: it looks like erasure of a major voting block with a history of being disenfranchised in favor of a narrative of conspiracy. It infantilizes a group that genuinely considers its options in the context of often-painful experience. Progressives aren't going to win if they keep treating the key voting block as invisible if not malicious.

 

[Worgen]

Grouping together does not entail nationhood.

It kinda does. What is a nation but a group a large number of peoples.

You seem fixated on what a nation and state is rather then how they developed. To put it in simple terms, pretty much every nation started with a family or group of families that grew larger to become a group, then a kingdom and then generally becoming nations. You can argue that its un-natural all you want but they developed very naturally.

 

[Tireseas]

It kinda does. What is a nation but a group a large number of peoples.

You seem fixated on what a nation and state is rather then how they developed. To put it in simple terms, pretty much every nation started with a family or group of families that grew larger to become a group, then a kingdom and then generally becoming nations. You can argue that its un-natural all you want but they developed very naturally.

Kind of?

What constitutes a nation is complicated, but it generally stems from a common language in the earliest concepts of a nation in the 1800s and has since been more defined by a group identity with a common mythology and history and can be tied to a geographic location or heritage, but is by no means is required to have it.

 

[Saelune]

No, he's the same kind of neoliberal mess that Democrats typically run. Which is why the odds are against him winning. His main voter base is the "anyone but Trump" voter, and those aren't numerous enough to win on. What will happen instead is low Dem turnout, because while Republicans vote like clockwork, Dems don't. So you either try to build loyalty to party as a core value (like the Republicans) or you offer them something they want to vote for, not merely that they're afraid not to vote against.

Ask yourself this: You are the average Appalachian, Southern, or Midwestern voter. "He's not Trump" is definitively not enough to get you to go out and vote for Biden. What is Biden offering to get you to be bothered to go vote at all, let alone for him?



That's a dodge. You'll notice I threw out a series of examples, ones that are in a domain I know you think about. A nice small starting point before going into more thorny things. Those examples should be *easy* questions to answer, but you dodged them. Consider why.



That's a tautology. Again, define equal in detail. Or at least point to places where law or policy explicitly aren't. I can, and you'd probably fight me over them. In fact, the two questions I started with "Is it OK" are in reference to actual US law and government policy.



And my order was Yang>Bernie>Warren>Questioning why the Dems are trying to lose. Dems only do well when they mobilize the base, when they get someone who gets people to want to go out and vote for them, rather than merely feeling obligated to. Biden is very much not that. Bernie very much was.

Dem's best chance to actually win was Bernie, then Warren, then it stops really mattering as everyone else is either too uninspiring or too unlikely to win the primary to matter.

How can Bernie beat Trump if he cannot beat Biden? I am so tired of this unmathmatical false logic. I am tired of this one, cause it makes literally no sense.

 

[Agema]

How can Bernie beat Trump if he cannot beat Biden? I am so tired of this unmathmatical false logic. I am tired of this one, cause it makes literally no sense.

This is like arguing that a team can't win a cup final when it didn't win the league (/ division).

And yet it happens, plenty of the time.

 

[Sneed's SeednFeed]

It kinda does. What is a nation but a group a large number of peoples.

You seem fixated on what a nation and state is rather then how they developed. To put it in simple terms, pretty much every nation started with a family or group of families that grew larger to become a group, then a kingdom and then generally becoming nations. You can argue that its un-natural all you want but they developed very naturally.

I'm fixated on it because your initial defense of a need for borders was claiming that it's natural. Borders are a feature of nation-states. Nation-states are not natural in that they do not exist in nature and haven't for ages. They are a construct, and they developed chaotically not out of a predictable linearity of progression. They, and their constitutuent features do not resemble any state of nature, and to claim so is to project the present onto the past. Even here right now you think grouping together still entails nationhood, when it also entails 1000s of other possibilities - tribes, kingdoms, communes, trading outposts, unions, cells, mass-lines, parties, etc. An ethnicity is not a nation because the nation politically supercedes the ethnic boundaries. The formation of a nation-state is contingent on a variety of historical situations that are then later reified after the fact on specific groupings. My point being that they developed out of contingencies, across history and are not 'natural' in and of themselves. The legal requirements and functions of a nation are not natural - two people together do not form a nation, 100 people together do not form a nation, or to use an even better example, more than one billion christians, do not themselves form a nation.

 

[Silvanus]

Yes, because we've had years of exactly this, just saying they are theoretically uninvolved with the DNC means nothing in the face of the political machine the DNC is able to bring to bear. The evidence here is that the only people to benefit from the decision is the DNC and without there being strong evidence of the DNC not being involved in the election board, it's safe to say they're involved in this decision.

Look, if you want to avoid voting for the Democrats because of a pattern of behaviour from the DNC, then go right ahead. They have a long track record of shitty behaviour, which 2016 made painfully clear. But that does not mean we lose sight of the burden of proof for every questionable thing that comes up now-- "strong evidence of them not being involved"?

My point being that parties not aligning with those terms is systematic practice, and if terms like these are imperfect then we are in dire need of a general platform of social emancipation so that we need to stop capitulating to the parliamentary machinery if we identify concepts that would be useful for the good of human beings overall. If left and right aren't totalities and are relativisitic, then I don't find them to be quantifiably useful terms in anything outside of the sphere in which they are used in tandem with political actions. Actions, which I think are horribly alienated and consequently empower a structure I fundamentally disagree with, though that's the anti-revisionism cropping up.

They are relativistic to a broad political culture, not to a particular set of parties or representatives. That culture is a product of a lot of things: philosophy, tradition, history, etc, not just party platforms.

You're not going to get usefully descriptive terms, fit for common use, which are not to some extent relative to the culture in which they exist.

This stigma regarding people not voting because they're lazy is also precisely what I'm talking about. If the action has the same consequence, that of voting a spoiled ballot and not voting, then what gives you the right to persecute people for not wanting to vote in the first place, when they don't want to pay lip service to a structure that does not serve any of their interests and has shown nothing but contempt for their political agency? It is absurdly elitist, especially considering how many non-voters are among the most disenfranchised in the US overall.

How am I "persecuting" anybody, exactly? I'm just telling you that abstaining still has an impact.

Yes, people do lie and misuse terms and say one thing but mean another. That is my point. I am saying the definitions they are and how they are used are not accurate to what they actually are.

We live in the time where the person calling themselves an American Republican are also supportive of the Confederate flag. Anyone who knows history should understand the absurdity of that.

Yes, but the concept of left and right applying solely to human rights fits neither the definition nor how they're used.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Look, if you want to avoid voting for the Democrats because of a pattern of behaviour from the DNC, then go right ahead. They have a long track record of shitty behaviour, which 2016 made painfully clear. But that does not mean we lose sight of the burden of proof for every questionable thing that comes up now-- "strong evidence of them not being involved"?

The point of a pattern of behavior is to gauge future actions, actions exactly like this. This is exactly something the DNC would do, benefits the DNC, falls inline with previous attacks from Biden people when they were asking Bernie to drop out, and has no compelling alternate explanation. We are way past giving the DNC the benefit of the doubt.

 

[Sneed's SeednFeed]

They are relativistic to a broad political culture, not to a particular set of parties or representatives. That culture is a product of a lot of things: philosophy, tradition, history, etc, not just party platforms.

You're not going to get usefully descriptive terms, fit for common use, which are not to some extent relative to the culture in which they exist.

That culture is manifest in a particular political system. A system which is nonetheless the global norm, and is subjected to influences from other nations. It's a system that is both a historical product, a diachronic, and a practice and reproduction of itself, a synchronic. It's produced and reproduced in the politico-legal apparatus, the agentive monopoly of which is concentrated in the state, and being trickled down into everyday culture as a set of practices that nonetheless displace agency into the alienated practice of voting. History and social trends both rupture with the appartus and reinforce it so long as it maintains this supremacy of political agency as part of its developmental process. Consequently those terms are filtered through the state and determined by it, in the parliamentary domain as part of the system's reproduction and continuation. The struggle for a non-state and non-parliamentarian (though one entails the other practically) politics is a distinct struggle in its own right, and it's one that identifies the issue within the relativism and the domination it imposes both on discourse and practice.

And you are right - those are not useful terms, hence why the initial statement of them not being real was right in a sense. I want a scientific analysis of politics, one that takes into account socio-historical and economic forces and goes past the politico-legal superstructure and parliament politics, and how they are reproduced in normative discourse.