Biden not in the Progressives pocket...

[LLCox]

...by a long shot. Like I said before, the radical Left is only a squeaky wheel that gets no grease. The only thing it does is give the Right something to cry about and they get a lot of mileage out of it.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...a-transition-team-that-biden-isnt-giving-them

 

[YDB95]

As much as I dislike the Washington Examiner, I'd have to agree. I can only hope one of these days the Democrats figure out that aiming at the (largely nonexistent) middle of the road isn't helping at all.

 

[Dribble]

Non-existent middle of the road? Why don't you go start your own party and see how "non-existent" we are.

 

[YDB95]

Non-existent middle of the road? Why don't you go start your own party and see how "non-existent" we are.

Almost everyone I know who claims to be "middle of the road" is really either quite conservative but doesn't want to be lumped in with the likes of Trump, or quite liberal but won't embrace that label because the right has done such a good job of vilifying it.

 

[KeithD]

As much as I dislike the Washington Examiner, I'd have to agree. I can only hope one of these days the Democrats figure out that aiming at the (largely nonexistent) middle of the road isn't helping at all.

Other than getting a Democrat elected president, when just mentioning "defunding the police" deep sixed a whole bunch of more progressive candidates in House elections. You can forget getting anything done if you can't get your people elected.

 

[YDB95]

Other than getting a Democrat elected president, when just mentioning "defunding the police" deep sixed a whole bunch of more progressive candidates in House elections. You can forget getting anything done if you can't get your people elected.

Most of the Democrats who lost were anything but progressive. (Which is understandable given the districts they were from, but nevertheless.) Most true-blue progressives won re-election comfortably.

 

[KeithD]

Most of the Democrats who lost were anything but progressive. (Which is understandable given the districts they were from, but nevertheless.) Most true-blue progressives won re-election comfortably.

Your point is irrelevant. The point is that more of the Democrats running for the House would have won if every Democrat running wasn't smeared with the "defund the police" brand. That's exactly what candidates who had a rough time of it have been saying. Spanberger, in the next district over from mine. spoke about this giving her a hell of a time. In my own district, Webb most likely fell for making the mistake of suggesting the police should be defunded--saying it only once, but he was papered over for it. And he was running against a Jesus freak who is under investigation for corruption.

And back to your original point, I haven't the least doubt that only a middle-of-the-road Democrat--Biden, so someone like him, to be precise--could bring it off. The continued suggestion by the Bernie bros that he could win the presidency is absolute fairy-airy nonsense in the United States, given what the Republicans can throw into the media.

And, again, if you can't get elected, you can't get anything done. Bernie has managed to get elected, but to no avail. He has no party network. He never has gotten anything done by his initiative other than getting a couple of post office buildings named.

 

[WillDarcy]

The fiction of the US left and the US right

In the US because of the electoral college winner take all we have 2 political coalitions. Generally speaking in each coalition you have a more conservative side and then the more liberal side.

The truth is both our political parties are very closely aligned as business parties. The only reason it feels like a left and a right (when its really the right and the further right) is because our news media only reports on the things they disagree on.

Think about it. Spend 58% of the budget on weapons and the military, barely a footnote. Pony up an extra $600 for unemployment and you'd think the fucking sky was going to fall. Support the Saudis even as they dismembered a journalist, run a misogynistic totalitarian regime where the only real entertainment is public executions (2 or 3 a week), not even honorable mention. The list goes on.

If one were to drop Bernie Sanders into just about any European parliament he would be a moderate middle of the road politician. Here in the US he's a radical.

For me, Biden is just a return to the level of corruption we grew up with. Trump was an abnormality not because he was corrupt but because he was gross and self serving about it. Not following the established forms.

Am i glad Biden Harris won, yes. But I don't kid myself.

 

[TinaL0ve18]

Non-existent middle of the road? Why don't you go start your own party and see how "non-existent" we are.

you are a thugocrat left-sider. if you're middle of the road, then there is no such thing.

 

[Dribble]

Almost everyone I know who claims to be "middle of the road" is really either quite conservative but doesn't want to be lumped in with the likes of Trump, or quite liberal but won't embrace that label because the right has done such a good job of vilifying it.

I am a fiscally conservative but socially liberal Democrat. See...one must be able to pay for changes...else...they are nothing but empty words.

The country is too divided. It will be impossible to force progressive policies. All one has to do is look at history. Progressive policies start from the ground up...not the top down. If you want Biden to be a 1-term President...go ahead and make the same mistakes. Case in point....Obamacare. i support it fully. But the way it was implemented IS THE REASON we lost control of the Senate...the House...and the Presidency...allowing a stacking of the Supreme Court that will take every gain we made and shit can it. Was it worth it? Not in my opinion. The way to a nationalized health care system is to start by providing it ONLY to children and old people. People will see the benefits and ask...why don't we get this? Then you say...you can have it, but it will cost. Ramming anything down someone's throat never works.

 

[Dribble]

I am a fiscally conservative but socially liberal Democrat. See...one must be able to pay for changes...else...they are nothing but empty words.

The country is too divided. It will be impossible to force progressive policies. All one has to do is look at history. Progressive policies start from the ground up...not the top down. If you want Biden to be a 1-term President...go ahead and make the same mistakes. Case in point....Obamacare. i support it fully. But the way it was implemented IS THE REASON we lost control of the Senate...the House...and the Presidency...allowing a stacking of the Supreme Court that will take every gain we made and shit can it. Was it worth it? Not in my opinion. The way to a nationalized health care system is to start by providing it ONLY to children and old people. People will see the benefits and ask...why don't we get this? Then you say...you can have it, but it will cost. Ramming anything down someone's throat never works.

What about the environment you ask...same thing. Name one car manufacturer that is NOT transitioning to electric. One. Was this transition forced? Or did it come organically? Bottom up...not top down

 

[TinaL0ve18]

I am a fiscally conservative but socially liberal Democrat.

Translation: I'm a greedy cunt.

 

[YDB95]

Case in point....Obamacare. i support it fully. But the way it was implemented IS THE REASON we lost control of the Senate...the House...and the Presidency...allowing a stacking of the Supreme Court that will take every gain we made and shit can it. Was it worth it? Not in my opinion.

Overlooking the fact that we didn't lose the Senate until 2014 and the Dems actually got more votes for House candidates than the Republicans in 2012 (gerrymandering saved the GOP majority), exactly what do you suggest Obama should have done? The man bent over backwards to accommodate the Republicans and they didn't give a solitary inch. THAT is why I say don't bother appealing to the centre. It sounds like a good idea in principle, but in practice it never gets us anywhere.

 

[KeithD]

I

For me, Biden is just a return to the level of corruption we grew up with.

This is why we can't have nice toys--or good people in office. You either are swallowing offered Kool-Aid or just a damn liar to be so casual paint Biden as corrupt. You and those like you are the problem in this system.

 

[SevMax2]

In the US because of the electoral college winner take all we have 2 political coalitions. Generally speaking in each coalition you have a more conservative side and then the more liberal side.

The truth is both our political parties are very closely aligned as business parties. The only reason it feels like a left and a right (when its really the right and the further right) is because our news media only reports on the things they disagree on.

Think about it. Spend 58% of the budget on weapons and the military, barely a footnote. Pony up an extra $600 for unemployment and you'd think the fucking sky was going to fall. Support the Saudis even as they dismembered a journalist, run a misogynistic totalitarian regime where the only real entertainment is public executions (2 or 3 a week), not even honorable mention. The list goes on.

If one were to drop Bernie Sanders into just about any European parliament he would be a moderate middle of the road politician. Here in the US he's a radical.

For me, Biden is just a return to the level of corruption we grew up with. Trump was an abnormality not because he was corrupt but because he was gross and self serving about it. Not following the established forms.

Am i glad Biden Harris won, yes. But I don't kid myself.

After an election in which progressive candidates and ballot initiatives vastly outperformed their corporate crook colleagues, how people like the usual suspects like Keith and Dribble deny this is textbook denial and confirmation bias.

 

[KeithD]

After an election in which progressive candidates and ballot initiatives vastly outperformed their corporate crook colleagues, how people like the usual suspects like Keith and Dribble deny this is textbook denial and confirmation bias.

There's only one national election--the presidential one. The rest represent vastly divergent electorates. There's no comparison to be made between House candidates' outcomes because they don't share a voter base. The average New York City voter isn't the average Springfield, Missouri, voter. You're doing the same thing the Republicans do--and did this election--painting the entire spectrum of candidates with a single brush and falsely equating a NYC voter with a southern Missouri voter. The problem is that the Republicans' across-the-board "socialist" and "defund the police" jab was effectively employed.

Your point is just irrelevant to the issue. Democrats lost seats in the House because the Republicans were able to do exactly what you did in this post--use one brush to paint them all, regardless of voter district content. The Republicans were able to succeed with it in certain types of districts. Your use of this is no more valid for comparison purposes than the Republicans' use of it is.

Bottom line is that "defund the police" was simply the most stupidly termed plank anyone could devise in the United States to try to win control of the government. Biden certainly treated it like a hot potato on the other side of the room from him.

The Democrat running in my district was a progressive. I actually faulted him for cozying up to conservative views I knew he didn't have during the campaign, and he didn't go after Trump, not even on Covid, and the candidate is a medical center doctor responsible for finding beds for patients across central Virginia. He made the mistake in a private venue of being recorded saying that some funds going to the police would best be devoted to programs keeping people out of crime (which, when properly labeled isn't all the controversial). The Republicans successfully crucified him by running this tape over and over again in ads saying he was for "defunding the policy" and hiding that. Sure it wouldn't work in NYC. It worked a charm here in central Virginia.

I can guarantee to you that every single progressive in the 5th Virginia congressional district voted for this Democrat over the Republican, who is an "I'm with Jesus" official at Falwell's Liberty University and is under investigation for secretly owning chunks of companies he sent business to as a county official. There should have been enough moderates voting for the Democrat to get him elected.

That's fact. That's what happened in other districts too. Your theories on this don't hold water in the facts of what happened. You're full of a whole bunch of wild theories about political stuff. You're just sort of a wild-eyed guy running around all the extreme edges.

I'm all for most progressive legislation I see on offer. You have to be elected before you can do any of that, though. As wild and evil and out there on the right the Trump people are, he's gotten 47 percent of the popular vote. You tell me that the Republicans couldn't successfully suffocate a progressive candidate with crap lies with the U.S. electorate at the presidential and most congressional district levels, and all you get from me is a horse laugh.

 

[SevMax2]

You’re quick to nationalize an election when attacking the left, but when we return fire, suddenly you’re Tip O'Neill and all politics is local. Cognitive dissonance allied to straw man arguments and ad hominem rhetoric are very convenient for dodging the reality on the ground. Cultural wokeness is unpopular, yes, but judging from the raw data, economic populism sells. Those are two very distinct phenomena and hardly oxymoronic.

Populism benefits the average working class voters of all races, as does nonintervention, while cultural wokeness is often linked to the very managerial elite that scoffs at the very multi racial working class that built America. It’s not rocket science. People vote in their perceived self interest and don’t trust the Establishment. Why should they?

If only the Establishment of both parties realized how completely most Americans of all races, sexes, ages, etc. hate them to their core. I defy you to name one neoliberal Establishment centrist corporate machine Democrat or Republican who wasn’t evil and corrupt to their very marrow, who didn’t have blood on their hands.

 

[KeithD]

You’re quick to nationalize an election when attacking the left, but when we return fire, suddenly you’re Tip O'Neill and all politics is local. .

I don't know what the hell you're talking about and you couldn't correctly present my position on anything, so I won't read any further than that. Your brains are scrambled on drugs or something.

 

[SevMax2]

I don't know what the hell you're talking about and you couldn't correctly present my position on anything, so I won't read any further than that. Your brains are scrambled on drugs or something.

Projection much? Back to iggy you go.

 

[Tim2run]

...by a long shot. Like I said before, the radical Left is only a squeaky wheel that gets no grease. The only thing it does is give the Right something to cry about and they get a lot of mileage out of it.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/...a-transition-team-that-biden-isnt-giving-them

*chuckle*

Kamala is...

It's not like he's going to go counter to their wishes, he knows they are a vicious mob and he's a politician already looking to his next campaign/legacy and he can piss down the back of Democrat moderates who will take it out of a sense of party loyalty, but if he so much as talks back to the AOC wing of the party, they will treat him as if he were a DINO (like the term RINO). Hell, they might even burn a city or two.

 

[Tim2run]

I think that the election results prove that politics is local except the vote for the President which did seem to be more of a national vote. It can be both in an age of the 24/7 news cycle and the political contributions of the press and the social media moguls. It's easy for them to influence a national election, but not so much on the local level where citizens are in contact with their candidates on a regular basis.

 

[LLCox]

For me, Biden is just a return to the level of corruption we grew up with.Trump was an abnormality not because he was corrupt but because he was gross and self serving about it. Not following the established forms.

Am i glad Biden Harris won, yes. But I don't kid myself.

THIS is how I feel. We are getting the same Swamp trump only made bigger. The difference will be tons less Drama, bragging and division from the Top.