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2020 Presidential Election Thread (1 Viewer)

wikkidpissah said:
anybody else a li'l dubious about da Bootyjudge's military service? heard he was a veteran when i first developed my mancrush on him and assumed it was a 9-11 reaction common to his gen. later i saw he was "called up" from Navy Reserve (which he joined in '09) in '14 while he was Mayor, did a few months "intelligence" deployment. does that sound to anyone else like a guy who cherrypicks deployment cuz he wants it on his CV?
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It doesn't matter to me whether someone served or not.   That said, good for Buttigieg for serving in a reserve branch -- he certainly didn't have to, and it's more than I've ever done.

 
IvanKaramazov said:
It doesn't matter to me whether someone served or not.   That said, good for Buttigieg for serving in a reserve branch -- he certainly didn't have to, and it's more than I've ever done.
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not disrespecting but, if i was a reporter, i'd be on the story of the circumstances of the callup of a sitting mayor if it's not out there already

 
He definitely gave input and pressed to go sooner rather  than later
 From his book:

“ made sure my chain of command knew that I would rather go sooner than later, and would rather go to Afghanistan than anywhere else,” Buttigieg wrote.





“Because I was a specialist in counterterrorism, Afghanistan represented the best place in the world to practice my craft,” Buttigieg wrote. “It was also a country, troubled but hauntingly beautiful that I had gotten to know while a civilian adviser at McKinsey. If my turn was coming up to get mobilized, I wanted it to be there.”


 
Yeah, I don't think Trump is threatened by Biden at all.  I think he'd actually prefer to run against him.  

 
ren hoek said:
Rather have a bunch of draft dodgers than "heroes" napalming little kids in Vietnam.  
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I have no issue with it if the person owns it and of it is reflected in their politics. I don’t see that with Donald. It seems like Donald wants it both ways. He’s rah rah military guy but didn’t want to risk anything personally. 

 
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Mystery Achiever said:
He definitely gave input and pressed to go sooner rather  than later
 From his book:

“ made sure my chain of command knew that I would rather go sooner than later, and would rather go to Afghanistan than anywhere else,” Buttigieg wrote.

“Because I was a specialist in counterterrorism, Afghanistan represented the best place in the world to practice my craft,” Buttigieg wrote. “It was also a country, troubled but hauntingly beautiful that I had gotten to know while a civilian adviser at McKinsey. If my turn was coming up to get mobilized, I wanted it to be there.”
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I'm waiting for Trump to claim that Buttigieg's service doesn't mean much -- he didn't sacrifice much -- because he wasn't even captured.

 
Ilov80s said:
I have no issue with it if the person owns it and of it is reflected in their politics. I don’t see that with Donald. It seems like Donald wants it both ways. He’s rah rah military guy but didn’t want to risk anything personally. 
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Yeah, I could do without the chickenhawk stuff.  But we should be a little more weary of valourizing people who participated in mass genocide of the Vietnamese.  Just straightup mass killing.  

 
wikkidpissah said:
anybody else a li'l dubious about da Bootyjudge's military service? heard he was a veteran when i first developed my mancrush on him and assumed it was a 9-11 reaction common to his gen. later i saw he was "called up" from Navy Reserve (which he joined in '09) in '14 while he was Mayor, did a few months "intelligence" deployment. does that sound to anyone else like a guy who cherrypicks deployment cuz he wants it on his CV?

tell you why i say - me 94yo Da is a crusty bugger, a little to the right of Attila the Hun. Harry Truman drafted him for Korea but i know from his ol' stories that he found a loophole to keep from getting his ### shot off - he was recruited for Officer's Candidate School and found that, if he kept changing his specialty just as the training was ending, he could stay in OCS indefinitely. he eventually found a Signal Corps CO to suck up to and spent the rest of his hitch on regular leave from Fort Monmouth, living in the NYC YMCA going to Broadway shows. but now you'd think he took Pork Chop Hill by himself by the way he portrays his "service" and wraps himself in available honorifics. jussayin', know'm'sayin?

hey, anyone who serves has my respect (altho, being Nam gen, i am tolerant of anyone who dodged that clusterhug). but is Mayor Pete gilding the lily, doing his hitch strictly for resumé purposes? anybody got the veritas onnat?
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It seems the only lesson he took from Afghanistan, and his whole life in general, is a belief in the US' capacity for rainbow imperialism.  I like veterans who served in the armed forces and became antiwar.  

Gravel recently got in hot water for saying Pete was basically 'running on the fact that he's gay.' I liked their statement here:

I want to apologize to gay voters for implying that they are lining up behind Buttigieg.  The gay electorate make critical and informed decisions.  Mayor Buttigieg's candidacy offers gay Americans a historic chance at White House representation.  A chance for gay boys and men to see a bit of themselves in the trigger finger behind the rancid American war machine.  Don't fall for it.  

Buttigieg worked for a global consulting firm, McKinsey, from 2007-2010.  The firm's predatory practices were one of the major causes of the Great Recession.  During his time there they aggressively pushed Oxycontin and collaborated with the Saudi government, which punishes homosexuality with death. 

Despite appearances, Buttigieg does not represent a break from the past.  He is in favor of jailing his fellow veteran and queer sister Chelsea Manning. He is a proud imperialist and an extoller of racist "All Lives Matter" rhetoric.  I, too, am a veteran.  But unlike Buttigieg, my experience made me anti-war, not pro-war.  The leading policy of my campaign is, in fact, to End All Wars.

A Buttigieg presidency unequivocally threatens the well-being of people the world over who are subjected to America's imperialist whims.  He supports drone strikes, concealing war crimes, and growing our military-industrial complex.  There is simply too much life at stake to entertain the deadly ambitions of this McKinsey cypher.  

 
ren hoek said:
  But we should be a little more weary of valourizing people who participated in mass genocide of the Vietnamese.  Just straightup mass killing.  
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The only people who participated in the mass genocide of the Vietnamese were the north Vietnamese. Stop spreading this crap. The United States military made mistakes in Vietnam, and some individual soldiers committed crimes (such as My Lai) but the implication that we committed a deliberate genocide of the Vietnamese people is a disgusting lie, as disgusting as the lies you are so eager to tell about Israel. 

 
timschochet said:
The only people who participated in the mass genocide of the Vietnamese were the north Vietnamese. Stop spreading this crap. The United States military made mistakes in Vietnam, and some individual soldiers committed crimes (such as My Lai) but the implication that we committed a deliberate genocide of the Vietnamese people is a disgusting lie, as disgusting as the lies you are so eager to tell about Israel. 
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As per usual, you are dead wrong Tim.  Official policy incentivized high body counts and indiscriminate bombing.  From '64-'73 the US dropped 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos- the equivalent of a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes for 9 years.  Since the end of the Vietnam War, over 40,000 people have been killed by unexploded ordnance.  Millions of Vietnamese were massacred.  It was a war animated by racist dehumanization of the "####s" and hideous war crimes.  Veterans killed themselves because they couldn't live with the shame of killing innocent people.  There was a clear aggressor and a clear victim.  

These were not well-intentioned "mistakes" that benevolent peacekeepers stumbled into- they were deliberate, coordinated, officially sanctioned crimes against humanity.  And they all died for nothing.

 
ren hoek said:
As per usual, you are dead wrong Tim.  Official policy incentivized high body counts and indiscriminate bombing.  From '64-'73 the US dropped 2 million tons of ordnance on Laos- the equivalent of a planeload of bombs every 8 minutes for 9 years.  Since the end of the Vietnam War, over 40,000 people have been killed by unexploded ordnance.  Millions of Vietnamese were massacred.  It was a war animated by racist dehumanization of the "####s" and hideous war crimes.  Veterans killed themselves because they couldn't live with the shame of killing innocent people.  There was a clear aggressor and a clear victim.  

These were not well-intentioned "mistakes" that benevolent peacekeepers stumbled into- they were deliberate, coordinated, officially sanctioned crimes against humanity.  And they all died for nothing.
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As usual you are dead wrong- not in your facts, which are fairly correct, but in your interpretation of them. 

The Vietnam War was a tragedy of mistakes, lies, and ill-thought out support of a corrupt regime. It is true that we sought high body counts because that’s the way we won World War II and we didn’t recognize the futility of trying to fight that kind of war against a popular insurgency. Math whizzes like McNamura were obsessed with figures; it’s a lesson in the dangers of technocracy that we should never forget. 

But- as dumb as we were, as many mistakes as we made, and even a few bad actions, it should never be forgotten that we were fighting against pure evil. The North Vietnamese were a murderous, Stalinist regime who demonstrated again and again a complete disregard for human life. One of the worst regimes to ever exist in human history. 

 
timschochet said:
As usual you are dead wrong- not in your facts, which are fairly correct, but in your interpretation of them. 

The Vietnam War was a tragedy of mistakes
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Stop.  Just stop there.  They were not mistakes- they knew precisely where they targeted those bombs, threw grenades, raped little girls, played "##### (censored word for an Asian slur) hockey", and murdered civilians.  They systematically slaughtered innocent, defenseless people that posed zero threat to them, took breaks to eat lunch, then resumed shooting women and children.  The power dynamic was completely one-sided and asymmetric.  They 'killed anything that moved'.  

A mistake is an accounting error, or making a sandwich wrong.  Not a strategic war of aggression.  Christ almighty Tim

 
ren hoek said:
Stop.  Just stop there.  They were not mistakes- they knew precisely where they targeted those bombs, threw grenades, raped little girls, played "##### (censored word for an Asian slur) hockey", and murdered civilians.  They systematically slaughtered innocent, defenseless people that posed zero threat to them, took breaks to eat lunch, then resumed shooting women and children.  The power dynamic was completely one-sided and asymmetric.  They 'killed anything that moved'.  

A mistake is an accounting error, or making a sandwich wrong.  Not a strategic war of aggression.  Christ almighty Tim
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Can we get a summation like this on Putin & Assad in the Syria thread? TIA.

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
Can we get a summation like this on Putin & Assad in the Syria thread? TIA.
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Not from ren. If it’s the USA or Israel then we need to assume the worst possible motives and actions. If it’s an evil murderer like Putin or Assad, we can always find an excuse or justification. 

 
Maurile Tremblay said:
I'm waiting for Trump to claim that Buttigieg's service doesn't mean much -- he didn't sacrifice much -- because he wasn't even captured.
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Wait til he gets hold of the quote that Buttigieg often served as a driver like "military Uber." (because he was trained to keep watch for ambushes, fire a rifle)
          --------------------->   "Did you see what he did over there, folks? Uber. Can you believe it folks? Uber!"

 
Just wanted to drop in and say how flabbergasted I am that with numerous very good Dem candidates we're still gonna end up running Biden. A guy who has had his incompetence on display for decades and dismissed for this position multiple times over previously. This country just can't get out of its own way.

 
Mr Anonymous said:
Just wanted to drop in and say how flabbergasted I am that with numerous very good Dem candidates we're still gonna end up running Biden. A guy who has had his incompetence on display for decades and dismissed for this position multiple times over previously. This country just can't get out of its own way.
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Biden is definitely in my bottom three of Dem candidates. I'd give almost anything to be able to flip-flop his appeal and numbers with Warren's. I disagree with his policies and I don't like that we've lowered our standards regarding flubs and clumsy statements and past sins so much, even though it's been obvious that it would happen ever since Trump won.

But I think people need to get used to the idea of Biden as the nominee. Old people and African Americans seem to love him, and while it's fine and good to disagree with them it is arrogant and off-putting to refuse to acknowledge the validity of their opinion. And the idea that he's "incompetent" is pretty absurd. He was a US Senator for decades and a Vice-President for 8 years. He knows how federal government and the executive branch function as well as anyone on earth.  He got the VP nominee in part because he could bring foreign affairs expertise to a ticket that would have otherwise lacked it. Saying awkward #### in public a lot doesn't make you incompetent. It's not great, but it's a far cry from incompetence.  And, yeah he's run two other times without winning, but the times have changed.  Most of the other Dem candidates in the field would have been quickly dismissed in 1988 too, albeit for even worse and more outdated reasons.

Anyway, if it makes fellow progressives feel better the next Democratic president isn't gonna be able to do anything of significance legislatively anyway unless the Dems somehow also manage to win the Senate ... something that is more likely if they win the presidential election in a blowout, which won't happen with a progressive nominee. Most of the changes will have to happen administratively, and having a boring centrist in the White House actually greases the wheels on that.  For example an aggressive EPA approach to climate change under Clean Air Act authority will draw less attention and pushback in a Biden administration than if it came from a Sanders administration.

 
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Mr Anonymous said:
Just wanted to drop in and say how flabbergasted I am that with numerous very good Dem candidates we're still gonna end up running Biden. A guy who has had his incompetence on display for decades and dismissed for this position multiple times over previously. This country just can't get out of its own way.
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Establishing a two-time loser (resigned for plagiarism/never got above 1% 2nd time) with serious liabilities (age, gropes & outbursts) as our protection against the Big Bad Wolf is precisely the kind of thinking that got us the Big Bad Wolf in the first place, but the wusses with whom i share a leftist sensibility don't appear to see or care that such is the case. There's a reason i've only voted major party once (Obama, a sheep in wolfhound's clothing) since 1972. 

 
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wikkidpissah said:
Establishing a two-time loser (resigned for plagiarism/never got above 1% 2nd time) with serious liabilities (age, gropes & outbursts) as our protection against the Big Bad Wolf is precisely the kind of thinking that got us the Big Bad Wolf in the first place, but the wusses with whom a share a leftist sensibility don't appear to see or care that such is the case. There's a reason i've only voted major party once (Obama, a sheep in wolfhound's clothing) since 1972. 
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Wusses? :SMH: :rolleyes:

I would imagine that a poll of Democrats here would not show the same degree of enthusiasm for Biden that the national polls indicate.

But it is still early and I don't think most Democrats are giving the same degree of thought to the candidates that the media is.

 
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wikkidpissah said:
Establishing a two-time loser (resigned for plagiarism/never got above 1% 2nd time) with serious liabilities (age, gropes & outbursts) as our protection against the Big Bad Wolf is precisely the kind of thinking that got us the Big Bad Wolf in the first place, but the wusses with whom a share a leftist sensibility don't appear to see or care that such is the case. There's a reason i've only voted major party once (Obama, a sheep in wolfhound's clothing) since 1972. 
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You can't make this simplistic argument without addressing the fact that Biden polls better head to head vs Trump in swing states than Clinton- who lost the election by 80,000 votes spread across 3 states- did at any point after Trump was established as the GOP nominee and embraces by the party. 

Maybe you think his numbers will falter (although the opposite is usually true for candidates who emerge from wide open primaries). Maybe you think he'll end up like Clinton for some reason I don't know.  I'm open to hearing about it. But if you ignore the numbers completely the comparison is worthless.

And it's not my place to judge anyone's progressive or leftist credentials, but let's just say that if a person is willing to sit out or vote third party this election and by so doing increase the chances of 4 more years of doing nothing about climate change, and turning away refugees, and ripping innocent children away from their parents and throwing them in cells or in some cases letting them die, and pulling protection for DREAMers, and aggressive repression of the free press, and sanctioned bigotry against the LGBTQ community, and inaction on gun control, and stuffing the judiciary with Federalist Society-approved judges, and defunding Planned Parenthood, and slashing taxes for billionaires ... that person apparently has a very different definition of "leftist" than I do.

 
squistion said:
Wusses? :SMH: :rolleyes:

I would imagine that a poll of Democrats here would not show the same degree of enthusiasm for Biden that the national polls indicate.

But it is still early and I don't think most Democrats are giving the same degree of thought to the candidates that the media is.
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No other way to characterize a party that hasn't put up a leftist in 40+ years. As a Vermonter, i have no respect that Sanders will do anything beyond shouting, but he did catch a spirit the last time around which, other than mistaking Obama for a transformative candidate, was the first time since Reagan and all the party did was go "Whew!" that they had the superdelegates to defeat him with then did the opposite of beating the bushes for real leftist candidates for local races. The Democratic Party is an active. major cause and partner in what is going on in this country RIGHT NOW and it is specifically because they have no care for progress and policy. If the other major party wasn't actually opposing the interests of the dispossessed, they'd have little in the way of membership either.

 
TobiasFunke said:
You can't make this simplistic argument without addressing the fact that Biden polls better head to head vs Trump in swing states than Clinton- who lost the election by 80,000 votes spread across 3 states- did at any point after Trump was established as the GOP nominee and embraces by the party. 

Maybe you think his numbers will falter (although the opposite is usually true for candidates who emerge from wide open primaries). Maybe you think he'll end up like Clinton for some reason I don't know.  I'm open to hearing about it. But if you ignore the numbers completely the comparison is worthless.

And it's not my place to judge anyone's progressive or leftist credentials, but let's just say that if a person is willing to sit out or vote third party this election and by so doing increase the chances of 4 more years of doing nothing about climate change, and turning away refugees, and ripping innocent children away from their parents and throwing them in cells or in some cases letting them die, and pulling protection for DREAMers, and aggressive repression of the free press, and sanctioned bigotry against the LGBTQ community, and inaction on gun control, and stuffing the judiciary with Federalist Society-approved judges, and defunding Planned Parenthood, and slashing taxes for billionaires ... that person apparently has a very different definition of "leftist" than I do.
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:yawn: You're not open to anything

ETA: and any leftist would have a very different definition of leftist than you

 
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wikkidpissah said:
:yawn: You're not open to anything
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Sure I am.  I've gone from being a left-center Dem capitalist type to being a far left Warren-supporting type over the last 3-4 years, in part due to conversations I've had in this forum. Anyone who has been been posting regularly in political threads since the pre-Trump days will vouch for me on that.

I don't understand your perspective at all, but if you can convince me that whatever it is that prevents you from casting a vote for an imperfect opposition candidate to Trump- and all the policies he's adopted that I listed- is somehow consistent with left or progressive values, I'm open to changing my mind. It's true that I've had this conversation before with lots of people, and none yet has presented a reason that I think comes even close to outweighing the harm of a permanently conservative judiciary, or abusing immigrant children, or shutting down any and all efforts to address climate change, or any of dozens of other real world things with real and immediate impacts on the less fortunate that the Trump administration has done and will continue to do if he's reelected. But hey, you have a way with words ;)

 
squistion said:
Joe Biden is embracing the framework of the Green New Deal in his new climate plan and calling for:

* Spending $1.7 trillion in clean energy

* Net-zero emissions goal by 2050

* Rejoining the Paris climate accord

* Promising aggressive efficiency standards

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/live-blog/meet-press-blog-latest-news-analysis-data-driving-political-discussion-n988541
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The link also outlines Warren's plan, which IMO is definitely more focused and potentially much more effective. Keeps the government's involvement in the research and procurement domains which would stimulate the private sector vs. interfere with it.

I'm a huge Warren non-fan due to free college but her initial proposal is impressive. I just hope she doesn't conflate it with social justice like the GND or it goes nowhere.

 
TobiasFunke said:
Sure I am.  I've gone from being a left-center Dem capitalist type to being a far left Warren-supporting type over the last 3-4 years, in part due to conversations I've had in this forum. Anyone who has been been posting regularly in political threads since the pre-Trump days will vouch for me on that.

I don't understand your perspective at all, but if you can convince me that whatever it is that prevents you from casting a vote for an imperfect opposition candidate to Trump- and all the policies he's adopted that I listed- is somehow consistent with left or progressive values, I'm open to changing my mind. It's true that I've had this conversation before with lots of people, and none yet has presented a reason that I think comes even close to outweighing the harm of a permanently conservative judiciary, or abusing immigrant children, or shutting down any and all efforts to address climate change, or any of dozens of other real world things with real and immediate impacts on the less fortunate that the Trump administration has done and will continue to do if he's reelected. But hey, you have a way with words ;)
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My answer lies in the reason why we have "a permanently conservative judiciary, or abusing immigrant children, or shutting down any and all efforts to address climate change, or any of dozens of other real world things with real and immediate impacts". It's because the right established a new identity and the left did not, so, when undecideds have looked for something to vote for, way too many of them cast votes for the loudest voice.

This country is unfair. America wants to be unfair because its citizens all want to make it big and want to make sure the gravy train is there when they do, so they can live the dream.

A leftist believes that America is only as strong as its weakest link, which is in great variance with the above sentence. We know this country can provide for all, we just don't know how to get the power to arrange that and how to even things out when we do.

Fairness. The word 'fair' is a little like the word 'now' - you only see it on the way to somewheres else. But John Kennedy raised me to believe that there was a day when every American could wake up believing they had the opportunity to succeed, and i'll die thinking that's still so.

But i learned another lesson in the 60s - that one doesn't make things fair by being fair. I was a teen runaway for a year and a half and, being relatively smart, i spent most of that time without an address in California NOT fighting the elements. I was close enough to being beaten death as a homeless person that i didn't care what part of town or country gave me the best chance @ food & shelter. So i ate at missions in Oaktown & Richmond, picked fruit in Salinas, bummed dozens of skid rows. The only place i saw hope were the areas run by the Black Panthers. Panthers carried guns & fed children and said ####in' NO to anyone who interfered. They flash guns at cops until they stood down and made Gov Ronald Reagan pee a li'lbit. It was a powerful thing to watch (tho one knew they had to lose in the end) and, from that day, i've had the orientation to care for my corner of the world but fight for justice, not care, when i fought.

Barely five years later, i covered the Democratic National Convention for a major news organization. I saw my first platform fight and it was sumn - shoutdowns and dustups and blackmailing and hostage-taking over farm planks, labor planks, anti-corruption planks, war planks. I was a guest of the Carter campaign - after he screwed the pooch by fighting fairness with fairness - at the 1980 Convention too and saw the same thing. This weren't no fatcats dividing up the pie - these were people (citizens, delegates, politicians back home and in DC) literally fighting over what they believed.

Then Reagan became president, changed the Land of Opportunity to the Playground of Millionaires, media exploded and sold the idea & trappings of personal greed to this country and the Democratic Party countered with Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, Bill Clinton (whose centrism was actually Republicanism that Democrats could vote for), Al Gore and John Kerry. And America ended up with debt; loss of power, respect & eminence throughout the world; institutionalized corruption and a galloping divide between haves & have nots and not one of those losing nebbishes would have stemmed that tide and the Party did little to oppose and eventually gave-in to a government riven by partisanship without ever providing an alternate vision. The dispossessed were never fought for and only came into the party because there was nowhere to go

So, yes - i voted 3rd party for Eugene McCarthy in '76, John Anderson '80, wrote in Jesse Jackson in '84, Perot in '92, the dreaded Nader in 2000 in an attempt to change the debate and make govt responsive again.  Meanwhile, the lack of true opposition in Democratic custodianship allowed Republicans to refine & consolidate their power to the point that it didnt matter who was up top anymore. When they got a stooge in 2000, they privatized war, prisons, elections, schools and weaponized K St.

Then Obama charmed & fooled us all. No one could imagine that such a transformative figure would virtually refuse to use his mandate. He never asked America to dig in on a single cause nor got in front of a single issue and his one success made healthcare a morass for an extra generation.

And none of that made America mad. What finally got the Democratic Party up on its haunches was their decades of fecklessness putting a reality star in the White House to do make Big Brother (not Orwell, CBS) confessionals the national dialogue. So, when i see all this righteous indignation and wegottawegottawegotta urgency, i'm all "where you been the last 40 years?!". I'm pretty sure it's too late, but have developed a crush on da Bootyjudge because he's the first candidate in a long while to place public service above private interest. But the horse is so far out the barn that, short of a cowboy lookin to wrangle that beast, the difference between a frantic rancher yelling "ooh, somebody catch him!" and one who never looks up or posts a For Sale sign since the horse is gone is negligible

 
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wikkidpissah said:
My answer lies in the reason why we have "a permanently conservative judiciary, or abusing immigrant children, or shutting down any and all efforts to address climate change, or any of dozens of other real world things with real and immediate impacts". It's because the right established a new identity and the left did not, so, when undecideds have looked for something to vote for, way too many of them cast votes for the loudest voice.

This country is unfair. America wants to be unfair because its citizens all want to make it big and want to make sure the gravy train is there when they do, so they can live the dream.

A leftist believes that America is only as strong as its weakest link, which is in great variance with the above sentence. We know this country can provide for all, we just don't know how to get the power to arrange that and how to even things out when we do.

Fairness. The word 'fair' is a little like the word 'now' - you only see it on the way to somewheres else. But John Kennedy raised me to believe that there was a day when every American could wake up believing they had the opportunity to succeed, and i'll die thinking that's still so.

But i learned another lesson in the 60s - that one doesn't make things fair by being fair. I was a teen runaway for a year and a half and, being relatively smart, i spent most of that time without an address in California NOT fighting the elements. I was close enough to being beaten death as a homeless person that i didn't care what part of town or country gave me the best chance @ food & shelter. So i ate at missions in Oaktown & Richmond, picked fruit in Salinas, bummed dozens of skid rows. The only place i saw hope were the areas run by the Black Panthers. Panthers carried guns & fed children and said ####in' NO to anyone who interfered. They flash guns at cops until they stood down and made Gov Ronald Reagan pee a li'lbit. It was a powerful thing to watch (tho one knew they had to lose in the end) and, from that day, i've had the orientation to care for my corner of the world but fight for justice, not care, when i fought.

Barely five years later, i covered the Democratic National Convention for a major news organization. I saw my first platform fight and it was sumn - shoutdowns and dustups and blackmailing and hostage-taking over farm planks, labor planks, anti-corruption planks, war planks. I was a guest of the Carter campaign - after he screwed the pooch by fighting fairness with fairness - at the 1980 Convention too and saw the same thing. This weren't no fatcats dividing up the pie - these were people (citizens, delegates, politicians back home and in DC) literally fighting over what they believed.

Then Reagan became president, changed the Land of Opportunity to the Playground of Millionaires, media exploded and sold the idea & trappings of personal greed to this country and the Democratic Party countered with Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, Bill Clinton (whose centrism was actually Republicanism that Democrats could vote for), Al Gore and John Kerry. And America ended up with debt; loss of power, respect & eminence throughout the world; institutionalized corruption and a galloping divide between haves & have nots and not one of those losing nebbishes would have stemmed that tide and the Party did little to oppose and eventually gave-in to a government riven by partisanship without ever providing an alternate vision. The dispossessed were never fought for and only came into the party because there was nowhere to go

So, yes - i voted 3rd party for Eugene McCarthy (3rd party '76), John Anderson '80, wrote in Jesse Jackson in '84, Perot in '92, the dreaded Nader in 2000 in an attempt to change the debate and make govt responsive again.  Meanwhile, the lack of true opposition in Democratic custodianship allowed Republicans to refine & consolidate their power to the point that it didnt matter who was up top anymore. When they got a stooge in 2000, they privatized war, prisons, elections, schools and weaponized K St.

Then Obama charmed & fooled us all. No one could imagine that such a transformative figure would virtually refuse to use his mandate. He never asked America to dig in on a single cause nor got in front of a single issue and his one success made healthcare a morass for an extra generation.

And none of that made America mad. What finally got the Democratic Party up on its haunches was their decades of fecklessness putting a reality star in the White House to do make Big Brother (not Orwell, CBS) confessionals the national dialogue. So, when i see all this righteous indignation and wegottawegottawegotta urgency, i'm all "where you been the last 40 years?!". I'm pretty sure it's too late, but have developed a crush on da Bootyjudge because he's the first candidate in a long while to place public service above private interest. But the horse is so far out the barn that, short of a cowboy lookin to wrangle that beast, the difference between a frantic rancher yelling "ooh, somebody catch him!" and one who never looks up or posts a For Sale sign since the horse is gone is neglibigle
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All of this is well and good, and I agree with decent chunk of it  But it's all conceptual. It's all principle, no pragmatism, and IMO approaching elections like that can cause terrible and irreparable harm.

I can understand, for example, why many people wanted to vote Nader instead of Gore or Bush. There was no good option in that election for a progressive. But the principles that led so many people to vote for Nader don't mean a whole lot to the thousands soldiers who died in Iraq, or the tens of thousands of friends and family members who mourned their deaths, or the innocent Iraqis who experienced losses on a scale a full order of magnitude greater than that, all of which would likely have been avoided if even a small fraction of those Nader voters in one state voted for Gore instead. I don't think those people care too much about the stuff you described in your post.

Similarly, I understand why a lot of people didn't like Clinton, even though I think she's far more progressive than most people believe, and voted Green Party or even Libertarian instead. But if a decent percentage of those Green Party/libertarian voters in three states had voted for Clinton instead, all that stuff I listed before doesn't happen. No kids torn from their parent's arms and put in detention centers. No undermining of the legitimate role of the press in American democracy, no free license for dictators to murder with impunity, no tax cuts for billionaires that the next generation will have to pay for, no ignorance and misinformation causing irreversible harm with respect to the existential problem of climate change, no states passing draconian abortion restrictions with the hope that a conservative Supreme Court will uphold them. All those problems, each of which should horrify every left-leaning person in America, could have been avoided with just a pinch of pragmatism.

So here's how I see it: we should all fight like hell for our values 1,460 days each quadrennial. Support Buttigieg or Sanders or Warren (especially Warren!) or whoever you think can get us where we need to go. Get mad at your Dem representatives or leadership if you think they're being too weak-kneed or sucking up to corporate interests or whatever. March, organize, donate, knock on doors, all that good stuff. But on that 1,461st day, when the country is faced with a simple binary choice, make the right one. People like these kids are counting on it.

 
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TobiasFunke said:
All of this is well and good, and I agree with decent chunk of it  But it's all conceptual. It's all principle, no pragmatism, and IMO approaching elections like that can cause terrible and irreparable harm.

I can understand, for example, why many people wanted to vote Nader instead of Gore or Bush. There was no good option in that election for a progressive. But the principles that led so many people to vote for Nader don't mean a whole lot to the thousands soldiers who died in Iraq, or the tens of thousands of friends and family members who mourned their deaths, or the innocent Iraqis who experienced losses on a scale a full order of magnitude greater than that, all of which would likely have been avoided if even a small fraction of those Nader voters in one state voted for Gore instead. I don't think those people care too much about the stuff you described in your post.

Similarly, I understand why a lot of people didn't like Clinton, even though I think she's far more progressive than most people believe, and voted Green Party or even Libertarian instead. But if a decent percentage of those Green Party/libertarian voters in three states had voted for Clinton instead, all that stuff I listed before doesn't happen. No kids torn from their parent's arms and put in detention centers. No undermining of the legitimate role of the press in American democracy, no free license for dictators to murder with impunity, no tax cuts for billionaires that the next generation will have to pay for, no ignorance and misinformation causing irreversible harm with respect to the existential problem of climate change, no states passing draconian abortion restrictions with the hope that a conservative Supreme Court will uphold them. All those problems, each of which should horrify every left-leaning person in America, could have been avoided with just a pinch of pragmatism.

So here's how I see it: we should all fight like hell for our values 1,460 days each quadrennial. Support Buttigieg or Sanders or Warren (especially Warren!) or whoever you think can get us where we need to go. Get mad at your Dem representatives or leadership if you think they're being too weak-kneed or sucking up to corporate interests or whatever. March, organize, donate, knock on doors, all that good stuff. But on that 1,461st day, when the country is faced with a simple binary choice, make the right one. People like these kids are counting on it.
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no puppies were harmed in this recycling of tired excuses. i tried...

 
wikkidpissah said:
no puppies were harmed in this recycling of tired excuses. i tried...
Click to expand...
So did I. I also addressed your argument. Not sure you addressed mine before dismissing it out of hand.  But that's OK, maybe our dialogue will convince others to do what's best for progressive causes and priorities in addition to theories.

 
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wikkidpissah said:
So, yes - i voted 3rd party for Eugene McCarthy in '76, John Anderson '80, wrote in Jesse Jackson in '84, Perot in '92, the dreaded Nader in 2000 in an attempt to change the debate and make govt responsive again.  Meanwhile, the lack of true opposition in Democratic custodianship allowed Republicans to refine & consolidate their power to the point that it didnt matter who was up top anymore. When they got a stooge in 2000, they privatized war, prisons, elections, schools and weaponized K St.
Click to expand...
I thought for sure that I was the only one on this board who voted for John Anderson in '80.

 
Marauder said:
I thought for sure that I was the only one on this board who voted for John Anderson in '80.
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:hey: John Anderson was my first ever vote, had just started college and turned 18 shortly before election. Was a registered independent. Changed that when I realized there was absolutely no way I was ever going to vote R.

 
squistion said:
Beto O'Rourke on inaction by Congress for not impeaching Trump:

"It is now time for the House of Representatives to act … and look to the future of this country and the generations that follow that are counting on us to do the right thing."

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1140292968601006081 (interview video clip at link).
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Donald Trump could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and the Democrats wouldn't impeach him. (Stolen from somewhere else; I don't remember where.)

 
lod001 said:
Who on the D side is promising me the most free stuff? My vote is always for sale.
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Well, Biden is promising to cure cancer.  I think that's the ultimate promise.

Thinking about it, given there are a huge variety of cancer types, I'll vote for Biden if, during the next two years, he manages to cure just one type of cancer to show he's good on knocking out the rest after he is POTUS.  That should be easy enough for him to achieve.

 
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