> Likewise this time around, nobody I have talked to seriously voted for Joe Biden on his own merits. They voted for him because he's not Donald Trump.
Yeah, same here, but that's because we live in progressive bubbles. Dem voters chose Biden over many other candidates that progressives preferred.
> We need better candidates who generate real support and appeal other than just not being their opponent. Not sure how to get there.
You cannot imagine someone actually liking Biden without being soft in the head. And other people cannot imagine someone liking Trump without being racist. But these assumptions prove nothing except lack of imagination.
People need to understand how heterogenous the US is...in every way. We have to regain the ability to see the world from other people's perspectives and extract the grain of truth from those perspectives.
I legitimately like Biden. I think he was the best candidate for the current moment.
People have a tendency towards "visionary" politicians, who arrive with agendas and strive to make them reality. Politicians who "flip flop" are derided, because changing your position is a sign that you never had real ideals.
But I think we have this backwards—in a representative democracy, the job of a politician is to represent the electorate! The ideal politician, then, would be an empty vessel, who was willing to move to wherever the people are.
And that's exactly who Biden is. He's always been a centrist democrat, but his "center" moves alongside his party. Biden also believes that governing is fundamentally about building coalitions, not smothering the other side.
I am worried that Republicans may simply be unwilling to make any deals, no matter how hard Biden tries or what compromises he's willing to make. But, if anyone can do it—and that's a very, very big "if"—then Biden probably can.
It’s likely that Biden’s centrism is going to result in him cowing to Republican pushes for austerity or limited, corporate bailouts that further exacerbate inequality and stoke populist discontent. I’m not sure that these impulses will work well in the context of the pandemic or it’s economic effects.
I agree with the second sentence, I'm hopeful the first isn't true (although I see the worry). The stories I've been reading about who he's using as economic advisors give me hope.
It’s been reported in multiple outlets that his top pick for the Commerce department is Meg Whitman, a Republican who has also drove several companies into the ground. Trump also demonstrated that nothing has to get through Congress with his appointment of no-vote-required acting heads, for which he suffered zero consequences.
A small observation: you know when we had more political compromise? When we had less (de facto) transparency.
Agreements bargained out in a dark room, with everyone announcing the compromise and expressing support for what's agreed, are how American politics worked best.
Radical transparency poisons compromise. By which I mean, non-comprehensive but absolute transparency: everyone knows details, but no one understands the greater picture.
In a largely uneducated democratic electorate (relative to our elected officials, their staffs, and professionals, and leveled as a non-partisan charge against all parties and independents), why do we try to completely usurp our elected representatives' ability to bargain on our behalf?
We, as voters, should judge our politicians on what they do, not what they reject.
The former results in functional compromises we're not thrilled with. The latter results in ideologically pure paralysis.
The way the house and senate looks, this is going to be one long 4 years of gridlock. That's the only meaningful thing republicans can do now. Block everything. Make Democrats look as bad as humanly possible, then campaign for a second Trump term (or whoever is not imprisoned at that time, maybe he can tweet-lead the country from prison as well).
I agree, and I am very concerned and scared about that possibility. I hope to god Democrats do everything in their power to win the runoffs in Georgia, but it may simply not be achievable.
America's political system—as it exists right now—is fundamentally broken. Politicians have discovered that it is not in the minority party's interest to compromise, and so they don't, and nothing whatsoever gets done.
I don't blame Biden for any of this, however. But I'm extremely concerned.
Oh boy, then what's the point of having representatives at all? Just put every line in the budget to a vote. Personally, I want someone smart and rational who can put in the work to understand what's going on, listen to subject matter experts, and make tough calls based on what's right for the country. I don't want an "empty vessel", but I'm also not super concerned with someone's political website perfectly matching up with everything I happen to believe at the moment.
> Personally, I want someone smart and rational who can put in the work to understand what's going on, listen to subject matter experts, and make tough calls based on what's right for the country.
Oh, I didn't mean to imply that we should have a robot! Yes, leaders need to listen to experts and advisors and make thoughtful decisions. But they should also stay in tune with the electorate.
Perhaps a politician is naturally inclined towards removing regulations so that it's easier to grow a business. That's a reasonable baseline position—but if there's suddenly an up-swell of support for strong environmental regulations to combat global warming, it's completely reasonable to change your position in response to the will of the country.
Well said. Let startups be visionary, the government should be boring and centrist most of the time.
If everything is going well and on track in the government, there shouldn't be any news.The president of the united states shouldn't be the center of attention.
>>I am worried that Republicans may simply be unwilling to make any deals
Recent history has shown the democrats are also unwilling to make any deals... See the last Stimlus where Republicans wanted to deal for doubling what was already the Largest government expenditure in US history, and the democrats would accept nothing less than 4x that plus several poison pills that had nothing at all do with the economic stimulus that was inside the so called "hero's act"
The problem with the division we have now, is Republicans / Libertarians and to some extend even Union/Blue Dog Democrats have a VERY VERY VERY different view of what the proper role of the federal government to the new "democratic socialist" democrats that have seeming taken over the democrat party (the Bernie, Warren, AOC democrats)
When one side wants 0 new spending but will "compromise" and agree to 1.5 Trillion, and the other side will accept nothing less than 4 Trillion in new spending but a fundamental shift in all aspect of American governance, I am not sure what kind of deal can be had there
I think Biden was well selected to be a candidate that everyone could tolerate.
But especially given his age and how much focus there has been on suggesting (perhaps falsely) that his health isn't good, a lot more weight has been given to Harris.
Harris did poorly in the primaries and I think even her supporters should be able to see why many people find her to be an extremely undesirable pick (it's not exactly the right political climate to nominate a self-described "Top Cop", and even Biden has a fairly "law and order" voting history, compared to typical for democrats).
I know people who hate trump who claimed to have voted for him or just not voted, because they believe that electing Biden/Harris would create a substantial risk of either Harris becoming president or forcing the dems to nominate Harris in the next election (and thus excluding viable candidates that actually reflect their views)... and that for all the find wrong about Trump, he's at least substantially ineffectual.
I had that view of Trump for the first 3 years or so - hey, he’s not just divisive but also incompetent so he’s not going to get anything substantial done! So nothing to worry about right?
But then COVID hit, and I’m fairly certain that having coordinated, science-based leadership in the highest levels of government would have spared us from quite a lot of suffering. So much for rooting for ineffectual.
> But then COVID hit, and I’m fairly certain that having coordinated, science-based leadership in the highest levels of government would have spared us from quite a lot of suffering. So much for rooting for ineffectual.
Yeah, COVID has really emphasized for me (a recovering libertarian) how important it is to have functioning and competent government institutions (along with other social institutions).
So you rejected libertarianism because of ineffective government response? Seems an odd position.
The COVID response by the government further illiterates why libertarianism is correct.
Having an authoritarian government is not a solution to a pandemic, and it is sad that once again people are willing to sacrifice essential liberty for promised safety
Ofourse as the truism goes, you will lose both in that deal...
The cult of personality that has wrapped itself around the office of President of the United States is down right terrifying.
> The COVID response by the government further illiterates why libertarianism is correct.
The US COVID response doesn't illustrate that any more than Soviet elections [1] illustrated that voting is a sham, which is to say it doesn't illustrate it at all. A particular bad implementation, especially one that was arguably sabotaged, doesn't disprove a concept. A laissez faire response to an epidemic is a bad one, and the US response has been pretty close to that in many areas.
I would love to know what what you think a proper governmental COVID Response would be? What state do you think the national model should have been like.
Also Do you believe COVID concerns should out weigh all other things including Economics, and even other health conditions (for example people stopped getting screenings for almost all other health conditions during this time. Cardiologists have come out extremely worried about the drop off in their health segments)
Finally Do you believe all rights can be suspended provided the executive of the government declares a state of emergency? What if any limits on this declaration should there be or this the declaration the sole purview of the executive
> Also Do you believe COVID concerns should out weigh all other things including Economics, and even other health conditions (for example people stopped getting screenings for almost all other health conditions during this time. Cardiologists have come out extremely worried about the drop off in their health segments)
> Finally Do you believe all rights can be suspended provided the executive of the government declares a state of emergency? What if any limits on this declaration should there be or this the declaration the sole purview of the executive
Of course not, but you're engaging in over-the-top all-or-nothing hyperbole, even if you don't realize it, so your question isn't reasonable.
Libertarianism seems far more reasonable than it actually is when you mainly compare it to straw men.
Imagine a worse scenario where he needs to address some escalated global incident that could lead to world War. People only see that he didn't quite f it up like they thought he would up until covid. That's not ineffectual. It was damn luck.
> But then COVID hit, and I’m fairly certain that having coordinated, science-based leadership in the highest levels of government would have spared us from quite a lot of suffering. So much for rooting for ineffectual.
I don't disagree, but I also see how its easy to see how other voters don't agree: E.g. look at the performance of other nations. You can make comparisons where the US doesn't look bad (or even looks good) depending on what comparisons you make and what time windows you choose.
Similarly, if you emphasize the importance of the errors of science-driven bodies, the amount of flip-flopping in expert advice (e.g. over masks), or the specific state responses in states that have local administrations more like what we would have hoped for, you could make an argument that it would not have made that much difference. Maybe not a correct argument, but at least one where reasonable and informed people could have a debate over it.
There is a lot of noise in pandemic impact, a lot of noise in how people perceive pandemic impact, and there hasn't been much time to reach robust scientific conclusions on the impact of different policies. I wouldn't argue that differences between policies aren't real, but just that they're (currently) easily spun or discounted.
There is, also, I think a good argument to be made to cautious about science based leadership in general. The tremendous power of science is that it gives you the power to defy tradition, popular will, and even common sense and make the world dramatically better, because its predictions were right. But when science is wrong, it can also be used to defy reason and common sense and bring tremendously bad results. E.g. there has been more than one genocide carried out in the name of "science". Rejecting science is not the answer, but nor is blindly following whatever is passing for science in your civilization at any moment. :)
> Biden has a fairly "law and order" voting history, compared to typical for democrats
Keeping in mind that Biden hasn't been a senator since 2009, during his time in the senate he was dead center among senate Democrats in terms of liberal/conservative votes cast (i.e. both more liberal and more conservative than 50% of his fellow Democratic senators): https://voteview.com/person/14101/joseph-robinette-biden-jr . Of course as noted this was over a decade ago, and what passed for centrist back then might not today.
In case you're wondering how this metric pans out for the most recent Senate: https://voteview.com/congress/senate/115/text , which (according to this metric) lists the four most liberal senators (as shown by their senate votes) as, in order, Warren, Harris, Booker, and Sanders.
I agree, but I don’t think one needs to be particularly overall right-leaning to be right-leaning in a specific facet, and GP was specifically speaking about (and only about) the law and order aspect.
I think ineffectual is wrong here, re: Trump. By State Department metrics alone, we pay more now for less people and less passports processed than before Trump took office. Anecdotally, we tend to have less State department representation at trade and industry conferences around the world. It's not very clear to my why we're spending more on the State department under Trump than any year under Obama if we're doing less with it...
It’s a great environment to be a self-described “top cop.” This summer, more than half of Latinos polled said they were more worried about the “breakdown of law and order” than “systemic racism.” Nobody except the progressive wing of the Democratic Party sees being a prosecutor as a liability.
I think it's a liability in that the democrats best shot at the presidency are candidates that have progressive credentials without being too progressive themselves.
Kamala is very progressive in a way that's a huge liability in the general, but because she's a prosecutor she doesn't get as much credit as she should in the primary. And I think in that sense it can be a liability.
> Yeah, same here, but that's because we live in progressive bubbles.
Biden is a stopgap, he was what was required to get rid of Trump, which was job #1, a P1 if you will. A "progressive bubble" or other media-created marketing phrase is not a factor, it's a pure transaction: Trump has to go. People rose to the occasion this time.
> You cannot imagine someone actually liking Biden without being soft in the head
This isn't a fair interpretation of what they were saying, nor realistic. People are going to lament that a big part of Biden's support was functional, in order to get Trump out, but people complain about unchangeable things all the time. It's not significant.
I think the point is, if everyone agrees Biden is just a stopgap, why didn't they just pick someone better?
For him to be a "stopgap" at all must imply that some Democrats today see him as the best end-game option, and we just need to "convince" them to be even more progressive
> if everyone agrees Biden is just a stopgap, why didn't they just pick someone better?
Because the electoral college distorts what "someone better" means. Democrats picked someone more popular than Trump in 2016 and lost. Biden's home state is the swing state of Pennsylvania. Home state advantage is generally fairly minor, but in this case the margins are so close that it might have actually made the difference (obviously we'll have to wait for the final count, which we won't have for days).
Exactly right about the electoral college distortion. If we went by popular vote we could probably have had someone much more progressive. But we have to thread the needle of the electoral college.
> In fact, Mr. Obama would probably have won the Electoral College even if the popular vote had slightly favored Mitt Romney.
> If all states had shifted toward Mr. Romney by 5.3 percentage points, Mr. Obama would still have won Colorado and therefore the Electoral College — despite losing the national popular vote by 1.5 points.
Losing the upper Midwest produces an EC disadvantage for Democrats, but that’s not an impediment to a traditional progressive candidate in the Sanders mold.
Moreover, the EC gives an average of a few point advantage one way or the other. It’s not enough for a “much more progressive” candidate. You can see this by looking at the House popular vote, which is proportional (and not affected by gerrymandering). Republicans regularly win the House popular vote: https://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/chat-...
> The electoral college advantage doesn’t systematically advantage republicans
Indeed, which is why one would hope that solutions for moving beyond this creaky, janky system would be embraced in a bipartisan fashion. Sadly, the approach that is furthest along in that regard, the NPVIC (which I have issues with, but is still better than the current system) has so far only been enacted exclusively by states that Biden carried this year. Regardless of the fact that the electoral college does not inherently benefit the Republican party in the long term, the events of the past 20 years have sufficed to make them adamantly against any reform here.
If the risk is that someone like Romney, or McCain get in, I think progressives would feel more free to take risks and pick a more progressive candidate. To most progressives, while they're not fans of Romney and revisionism aside weren't fans of McCain, having one of them in power feels less dangerous than having Trump in power.
If next election they're up against an attempt for Trump to get back in, then yes, you could expect a large progressive turnout for a Biden re-election. But if he's against a more moderate republican, I don't think you'll see the turnout that happened this year repeat, which may turn out to be a problem for his supporters.
Note that Biden has already indicated that he would prefer to serve only a single term. Of course that doesn't mean he definitely won't be running in 2024, but if true then the race will be more wide open than a typical incumbent candidacy.
"Former Vice President Joe Biden’s top advisers and prominent Democrats outside the Biden campaign have recently revived a long-running debate whether Biden should publicly pledge to serve only one term, with Biden himself signaling to aides that he would serve only a single term. While the option of making a public pledge remains available, Biden has for now settled on an alternative strategy: quietly indicating that he will almost certainly not run for a second term while declining to make a promise that he and his advisers fear could turn him into a lame duck and sap him of his political capital. According to four people who regularly talk to Biden, all of whom asked for anonymity to discuss internal campaign matters, it is virtually inconceivable that he will run for reelection in 2024, when he would be the first octogenarian president. “If Biden is elected,” a prominent adviser to the campaign said, “he’s going to be 82 years old in four years and he won’t be running for reelection.” The adviser argued that public acknowledgment of that reality could help Biden mollify younger voters, especially on the left, who are unexcited by his candidacy and fear that his nomination would serve as an eight-year roadblock to the next generation of Democrats."
He's nearly 78 now. He'd be 81 next time around, and his campaign this election cycle could hardly be called vigorous. The electorate will be younger also. I don't think there will be much appeal even as an incumbent unless his accomplishments in office are remarkable.
Beto, hands down. But he never stood a snowball’s chance because of how stupid the FPTP-imposed primaries are. You need to out-left or out-right all other candidates your party puts forward to get their backing for the real elections. It’s a recipe for disaster.
The problem was that more progressive policies were divisive even within the party, and out of the more moderate candidates running Biden has the most name recognition and probably the most "we know we're going to get".
If by "someone better" you mean more progressive, then you're exactly right: you need to convince a portion of the moderate majority to be more progressive. That is a difficult & long term process.
I'm not sure who you are referring to when you say constituency. What is your definition of that term? Mine is that all people are part of the constituency: A person elected president is responsible for leading everyone; A person elected to the House or Senate is responsible for representing everyone in their district/state, not just their party. My definition of "party" are all of the people registered as Democrats.
I think you're right that some aspects of more progressive policies are not divisive for the country: I think most people would agree that everyone should have healthcare. I think most people would agree that everyone should have access to education. I'm not sure I even look at those sorts of things as "progressive". The progressive part is how those things are structured and how they are paid for.
As I think about it further, I think there's also a possibility that a majority of Democrats do believe in progressive policies on things like this, but when selecting a candidate they opted for one someone not as progressive because they didn't think the progressive one had as much chance of getting elected. Their calculation, perhaps a bit cynical, was that the less progressive person that gets elected can do more than the very progressive candidate that loses.
democratic voters tragically did respond to the fearmongering of establishment propagandists, but the problem for them isn't in the electoral sphere. it's on the ground where people are facing mass evictions, a mental health and suicide epidemic, poor communities facing a "dark winter", and so on. the moderate wing of the democratic party choosing not to protect vulnerable communities won't make these problems go away.
Weren't the Democrats trying to craft a new aid package for the "dark winter"? I thought they were simply blocked by the Whitehouse/Senate who probably didn't see cooperation on this as beneficial to their election prospects... and a Whitehouse that couldn't seem to make up its mind on the issue.
I agree establishment leadership is skeptical of more progressive policies, probably not for philosophical reasons but for a more cynical calculations that support isn't good for their political prospects.
I'm not sure that package would have done very much. I suppose it would have been better than nothing though, and another one could have been passed after the election. You're probably right that Pelosi calculated that a compromise wasn't in her interest, but I'm also not sure if it was in the Republican's interest: I think both sides would claim victory and it would have come down to whoever was able to spin it the most to their benefit.
Unfortunately, now that the election is over I also don't think it will be easy to get anything done. The GOP is not going to want to give Democrats an early "win", and will likely pivot to their "but the deficit!" talking points now that they're out of office. I think things will need to get much much worse before a compromise is possible.
"more progressive policies" is a broad term, could mean anything from "Medicare for All" to "Abolish the Police", and some of these are much more divisive than others.
i mean again, advocating for abolition isn't a policy proposal.
take for example angela davis, the most prominent prison abolitionist today. she says in this interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3q_qV5mHg0) that there currently isn't a model of a prison-free society, only hints here and there.
Okay, call "abolish the police" a long-term goal instead of an immediate policy. It (and its shorter term policies like "abolish half the police by defunding them") are still very divisive among the electorate.
you can't abolish half of a thing. abolishing half of slavery still leaves you with slavery. you're confused about some basic terms here.
and if you're using a broad enough notion of divisiveness, then anything is divisive, including tan suits and dijon mustard. so divisiveness as you're using the term is not a property of the relation between the constituency and the political object (policy/slogan/etc.), but it's instead a tool that social engineers can use to create antagonism between populations.
for example, abortion appears to be an extremely divisive issue because of the way the issue has been socially engineered, but if you look at the data, a large majority of americans agree on the vast majority of abortion cases. it's the edge cases and disagreements on the rationale for/against abortion that are used to create the appareance of divisiveness.
You're right, abolition of slavery won't be achieved until settler colonial slave states like the united states are dismantled and replaced with a fair society. However, the abolitionists did accomplished many great notable things, such as killing a bunch of racist southerners.
Well, in practical terms, you have to be able to win the Democratic primary to be the Democratic candidate. There’s no “they” that could have picked someone better, and the people that you or others may have thought were better did far worse than Biden in the primaries.
As un-democratic the electoral college is, the US parties do a much better job in picking candidates in a democratic manor. Especially when compared to Germany, our parties run their party leaders as top candidates for chancellor. Party heads are elected by party members, but in practical terms any results under 85% plus percent is already seen as a lack in confidence.
So yeah, who ever wins party primaries is the candidate the parties base wants. Obviously, distorted by money, but still.
Sure, but it's pretty clear that certain candidates get more backing from the DNC mothership and the media than others. In turn, this affects voter perception.
They did pick someone - him. Let's not forget he was the nominee because he won the primaries meaning he was considered the best of the contestants. Not everybody is as progressive as Sanders and not everybody liked Sanders tone
I have a feeling that if you somehow ran a ranked-choice vote-transfer algorithm, you'd still end up with Biden as the candidate fewest people take issue with. The eternal problem of the left is getting people to agree on the specifics of how things should be improved.
People only rose to the occasion by chance. Had there not been corona and had the economy still been booming, Trump would probably have won. Surely it is possible to find someone out of 300 million people with the same qualities as Biden -- not a big ask, since his #1 quality is that he's not divisive -- but 30 years younger?
His #2 quality is probably having been Obama's Vice President. The majority liked Obama though to vote him in twice, and Biden represents more of that.
For democrats who chose him during his primaries, his #1 quality was that he was a moderate/centrist. The democrat party isn't only made up of leftists/progressives. There were a considerable number of democrats who were scared of Bernie and turned off by his supporters.
For GOP/Independents who voted Biden, his #1 quality was also that he was moderate and a close second was that he was not divisive.
A bit nitpicky, but I think it's important: "people" cannot be really considered responsible for the win. If just 1.5 voters every hundred had flipped side, Trump would have won. At this point, with the results so close, who wins the elections is basically a coin toss- which arguably isn't a terrible thing in democracy, as it means that the parties compete fiercely and almost optimally for votes. But still in the end the outcome of these elections seems due mostly to chance.
Note that due to the electoral college, it's not as close as you make it seem. On the national level the current votes is 51% for Biden vs 43% for Trump, that's quite a large difference.
There was only one candidate progressives preferred. Before Super Tuesday, all other candidates dropped out and endorsed Biden. THAT's how it happened.
Bernie maintained a slight chance up until the outbreak of covid where he suspended his campaign specifically out of concern for spreading the disease.
Biden is great... maybe not as progressive as other Dem's would like but I am moderate (D) -- and here is the thing, most voters want to pay their bills and not think about politics.
I got really turned off by some of the things Bernie was going for (like voting from prison) which are pointless if you have someone like Trump in office shredding the whole country. I like Bernie as a person but we would have lost Florida by a landslide with him on the ticket.
For this moment, Biden is great, I couldn't be happier.
I disagree, Democratic voters again did not get to choose their candidate. A candidate was selected for them. Even better one of the worst candidates during the primary was penciled in as Vice President; she is a good little party follower having the approved opinion and not one of her own.
If anything it shows that the party rules above all.
The lesson of Trump is that we have two political parties so immune to outside challenge it took someone of his level of money, fame, and more, to beat both parties and make no mistake, be beat both.
Hence going forward, when Congress tells you they want to pass laws preventing certain monies from entering politics always understand it is to prevent anyone challenging their two party rule
Democratic voters again did not get to choose their candidate
Didn't Joe Biden get most of the votes in the primaries? After Super Tuesday he was leading in delegates, and once the race came down to 1-on-1 with Bernie he did even better. This tells me there is significant support for very liberal policies like those from Bernie, but the party as a whole is still much closer to the center.
Bernie was the front-runner until the week where every single candidate simultaneously dropped out to endorse Biden. I think this is what people mean when they say the establishment rose to fuck Bernie when it became clear that he could actually realistically win the nomination.
Biden wasn't my first choice the primaries, but if Bernie had more support he could have beaten Biden in a head-to-head race. Though I think part of the cause for this accusation is that Bernie does well among non-voters. Thinking back to 2016 Clinton clearly had more support in the primaries than Bernie, but Bernie had a lot of support from people who didn't normally vote. So it does make sense that when Bernie lost, that group didn't feel represented by the democratic party.
This isn't a hypothetical problem. Trump is dead politically, but the dissatisfaction that made his brand of populism electable is still there.
And if Biden - or Harris - don't take steps to address it by 2024, someone much worse than Trump will appear.
And they may well win.
The reality is voters on both sides vote how the various media outlets tell them to vote. There's plenty of media noise, but the available narratives are carefully curated, and voters don't get to generate their own from the grassroots upwards.
This has become far more dangerous as Facebook and the various other online platforms have moved towards microprofiling and microtargetting.
This was a huge issue during the Brexit campaign, when disingenuous single-issue ads aimed at very narrow demographics with specific vulnerabilities put the result over the top.
Trump spent more on social in this election than Biden did, and the result was a good collection of surprise wins in states like Florida, and the second biggest voter turnout in US history.
If Trump had been even slightly more competent and focused and if Covid hadn't been happening this would have been a bloodbath for progressives.
The reality is voters on both sides vote how the various media outlets tell them to vote
I think it's a viscous feedback loop. Media outlets construct & present narratives based on what they believe will get people to tune-in/click etc., mostly a financial consideration. That content guides the audience's beliefs in the direction of the narrative. Media outlets are then locked in to that narrative, and must present content that coincides with or pushed it even further, and the cycle continues.
I agree with you on social media. I think Facebook targeting engagement has led to an extremely damaging level of polarization.
America has a ton of issues, but I think some democratic reforms are critically important. Voting rights are being attacked, and I don't think most people are represented well by the two party system.
The field narrowed after the results of the contests on 3/3. Biden had the lead at the end of that day and it only grew after that.
It's more likely they endorsed him out of self interest because it was clear he would win and they wanted to be considered for the VP pick or other posts. Conspiracy is much less likely and viewing it through that lens (without evidence) is more a reflection or one's beliefs than the actual events.
That perspective seems like it is just trivializing the reality that most Democrats do not like Bernie’s policies. It’s not some phantom scary “establishment” cabal rising up, which makes it sound like something unethical happened. Rather, it’s just sensible consolidation that is part of the process.
Bernie was still behind in delegates at that point, though he might have been picking up steam. He wasn't really ever a majority choice though: With the exception of Vermont and North Dakota, when he placed first in a primary it was with a plurality but not a majority of the vote. Collectively a majority seemed to be voting for a moderates, but the moderate vote was split among multiple people. When those other moderates dropped, that entire moderate majority coalesced around a single person. At least that's my interpretation when adding up % of voted by candidate.
However, I think a majority might not have wanted a moderate. They might have wanted a progressive, but voted moderate because their priority was to get Trump out, and they believed (maybe falsely, we'll probably never know for sure) that a more progressive candidate could beat Trump. The party establishment was certainly pushing that narrative.
The Democratic Party apparatus, particularly the DNC, logically lends its support to Democratic candidates, individuals who over time have demonstrated their loyalty to the Party. Like it or not, that's how political parties work. Sanders is not a Democrat. By all rights, he should've run as an Independent. If he had been able to successfully execute control over the party by appealing to the rank and file, good for him. But it is unreasonable to have expected the DNC lifers to have actively lent support to what was effectively a hostile takeover attempt. I don't see that as fuck Bernie, just as self-preservation.
But it is unreasonable to have expected the DNC lifers to have actively lent support to what was effectively a hostile takeover attempt.
I viewed it much the same. I also saw it as very similar to what President Trump did with the Republican party in 2016: Tracking his registered political affiliations and statements of political belief over the years put him all over the map. And he also faced similar pushback, probably more forceful, from the Republican establishment as Bernie did from the Democrats. I think that reveals a deep division between traditional the conservative platform and everyday Republicans, or at least that everyday Republicans were deeply cynical about the desire & ability of the Republican establishment to deliver.
Again, probably a similar mechanic was underlying support for Bernie. Which means (no surprise) that a very large group of Americans are completely disillusioned with the political establishment.
I think Americans will super liberal or progressive policies, but not the labels that come with them. Socialist, atheist and defund the police is still not how you get elected in the USA.
The way people in the US behave resembles atheists more than they resemble any religion. Generally people don't want to defund the police, including African Americans (people want police to be more accountable and empathetic), and really no mainstream politician is very close to socialism in this country. But its just the labels that stick.
The term "socialism" is thrown around a lot but I think it is most often used as a shorthand way to describe the desire to use the power of the federal government to address issues as contrasted with the desire to avoid using the power of the federal government. Broadly speaking "big government" approaches vs "limited government/free market" approaches, specifically with respect to the federal government.
In generally I think state government solutions don't receive enough attention in policy discussions.
I think that's the point of the comment you replied to. Biden did quite badly early on in the primaries, and only after a large chunk of other candidates dropped out and threw their weight behind him with endorsements that he did significantly better. In a sense, the party has made up its mind on the candidate it wants.
By 'quite badly early on in the primaries' you mean the first two where Pete won one and then tied Bernie in the state next to Bernie's home state, and then one that Bernie won, right? After that was South Carolina where Joe won handily, then Super Tuesday where Joe basically ran the table and never looked back.
The party did not decide, the people clearly indicated who they wanted. They wanted the person who could win the general election. Turns out they were a lot smarter than you give them credit.
The staggered nature of the primaries combined with the inanity that is FPTP makes for poor fairness. ~No one will vote for their preferred candidate if they find out he/she is doing poorly - they’ll vote for the most electable candidate that they can stomach.
No, Biden had never won a single primary (while Bernie had multiple during this campaign alone) until SC, when most every other candidate dropped out while endorsing Biden in a span of a week or so in a (successful) attempt to deny Bernie the nomination.
And then there are things like the Iowa caucus where Mayor Pete decided to crown himself winner before one was officially declared (gee, sound familiar?) because the Iowa Dem party crapped the bed.
Bernie only won a single primary, Nevada, prior to South Carolina. He lost in Iowa and tied in New Hampshire. Just prior to Super Tuesday several candidates who were polling in single digits dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden. Maybe it was because they agreed with Joe's policies, maybe the party put a gun to their head, and maybe they just didn't like Bernie.
Yeah, same here, but that's because we live in progressive bubbles. Dem voters chose Biden over many other candidates that progressives preferred.
> We need better candidates who generate real support and appeal other than just not being their opponent. Not sure how to get there.
You cannot imagine someone actually liking Biden without being soft in the head. And other people cannot imagine someone liking Trump without being racist. But these assumptions prove nothing except lack of imagination.
People need to understand how heterogenous the US is...in every way. We have to regain the ability to see the world from other people's perspectives and extract the grain of truth from those perspectives.