I loved Bernie in 2016 and 2020, Bernie and M4A were big reasons I moved leftward, but I'm disappointed by how big of a tankie Bernie has been about Israel. His far left online supporters have infected his brain with fascist ideas like having news coverage unfairly report how many Palestinians have died. I first got hints of his redfash Marxism when he wanted to abandoned the women of Afghanistan by saying the US should end the forever war, but forever war = forever equal rights.
Anybody else taken back by how far left Bernie is on Foreign policy? I'm kinda glad he lost now ngl
I see you're from an Aussie instance so as a Yankee I gotta be clear: that absolutely would not have happened
Bernie would have blown Trump out of the water and everybody knows it, people here are killing for just a little bit of social democracy that our liberal institutions are incapable of giving us. I'm not saying that as a communist, I'm saying it as a normal person who saw the clearly never happened since insane upswell of support in person for him.
Really important to make it clear that even though America looks like it's extremely divided and everyone has these ridiculous culture warrior stances from the outside, the swing states that actually make a difference are not as polarized, and have quite a lot of people that would've happily voted for Bernie but not as much Biden, because they perceive Biden as corrupt and part of the mainstream political establishment. Midwesterners in particular were pretty susceptible to the anti-establishment rhetoric Trump uses, and that's a big part of how he won 2016, but as you mentioned Bernie would've wiped the floor with Trump because the difference between an "anti-establishment" billionaire who was just opportunistically using populist rhetoric vs a social imperialist is quite palpable to these kinds of voters.
Following this line of thinking... why aren't we seeing leftists getting elected across the Midwest? Could electoralism be a viable plan in these states?
Funding is the biggest reason IMO. Bernie was kind of an anomaly for how much grassroots support he was able to garner, and he delivered a message that reached people that are otherwise disinterested in politics. Regardless, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are both from the Midwest and are easily the best representatives in the country.