Remember when people said Bernie wouldn't be able to get anything done because he couldn't work and compromise with politicians but Biden could?
I haven't been paying attention to US politics recently and was just wondering how well that argument held up. :biden:
It never needed to hold up. It just had to get him in power.
I can't tell you how many people I called when I phone banked that agreed with Bernie, but wouldn't vote for him because "he couldn't win." All they had to do was stoke the fear that Trump would get elected again. There was no reasoning with people once that fear was ignited (my experiences)
That was it. Trump was the perfect heel to get Biden elected. All the media had to do was stoke enough fear of what Trump might do and prop Biden up as the only candidate that could defeat him. Add in that people were burnt out and pissed off at Trump for bungling the response to corona. If Trump actually gave a shit about the virus and clamped down early I think he would have won. Trump should have ran on universal healthcare called "Patriot Care" or something.
Not even. One more stimulus check and we'd be talking about how Trump can win "against all odds."
Tbh even for the wrong reasons and instinctively they were correct imo. Bernie wouldnt have been allowed to govern or be president. Even if he won against Biden. Even if he "won" against Trump afterwards. Of course that would be still benificial for us cause it will highten the contradictions massively and would have led to many people radicalizing .
I do think that many working class even without class conciousness subconciously feels the pulse of the system and the trends of our times and rejected that social democracy and Bernie will help them materialy not cause it wouldnt in theory but because they know in their bones looking at america and feeling the systems attitude that it wouldnt be allowed to. And the media yelling about it for other reasons confirms this for them. And thats true in many countries at this point. No matter how many votes it got or no matter if it "won" on paper. That things wont really get noticably better through elections and changing presidents cause thats how things are . Our job isnt to tell them "no you are wrong the good tm politicians and reformists will help you with new welfare state policies ennacted under our current system" and every step along the way say "fight and vote for this and and these politicians and it will help and we can win" cause thats a lie. In time these people will be correct and and if that was your messaging as "the left" they cont believe you again if you say "actualy try this non reformist organizing now, this CAN work" even if you are right the next time
Sofact is that the people that said "i wont vote for him cause he cant win cant get it done" are correct even if they are just saying it without any material or class analysis but just cause it was put in their skull by the media. That message represnts the simple fact that he entire system showed that it was dead set in not even allowing middle of the road social democracy not just against neoliberalism but even against Trump. Rigging the primaries against him was the first line of that and it worked pretty well. There would be many more in the actual election, senate, inaguration, media , heart attack guns, manufactures scandals etc waiting to keep Bernie from winning and his policies from being ennacted.
Socdems and welfare state policies were allowed only when the system and staus quo decided to . And it would actualy be the correct move for capitalists to do it again now with Bernie. It wouldnt have cascaded to some revolutionary movement that would challenge them. It would be a good new deal move to "save capitalism" and keep the people complacent until the next round of neolibelarism. But its obvious that the entire state and directed media machinery of the bourgois decided (maybe it will come back to bite them) to not do that. And it wouldnt happened. Social democracy and socdem president wouldnt be "forced" on them while they were trying their best to prevent it. This isnt how that worked historicaly.
This isnt doomerism for a communist. Like i said the further Bernie got and the more open conflict and contradictions happened between him and his agenda and the system before it failed on its goals the better it would be for radicalization and our narrative. Privided that he actualy tried to fight for his agenda and policies and didnt bend backwards and compromise into Bidenism
I'll always appreciate Bernie wrecking himself on the reef of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie to show people the reality of bourgeois democracy. Unless he's extremely subtle I don't think that was his intent, but it is quite illustrative.
Same experience with text banking here. People said they didn’t like Biden, but needed to defeat Trump. Even pointing at polls showing Bernie doing better than Biden would be dismissed.
2016 was the last real chance to catch a break in the executive, imo.
It held up zero lmao. Any remotely 'controversial' legislation proposed by Biden has been shot down by a variety of legislators, notably Sinema and Manchin. Hell, why should I tell you, let's just have Joe himself tell ya! From Joe himself this morning:
Biden, speaking during an event marking the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre, responded to critics who question why he hasn’t been able to get a wide-reaching voting rights bill passed. “Well, because Biden only has a majority of effectively four votes in the House, and a tie in the Senate — with two members of the Senate who voted more with my Republican friends,” he lamented.
Biden is in the perfect position to use that supposed 'master compromiser' angle, but he can't do shit, because he has never been able to do shit, unless it was brazenly terrible. The only angle was that maybe conservatives would help out a dem that was more akin to them than not. And if you believed for an instant that conservatives would ever help out any dem ever, than you are dumber than Joe himself. It also underscores that Biden himself is dumb enough to believe that conservatives are 'friendly' with him; you know, the people who call him a 'dirty commie' much to his chagrin lmao.
So we're going to get 4 years of this sniveling shit before some QAnon chud wins the presidency.
So we’re going to get 4 years of this sniveling shit before some QAnon chud wins the presidency.
Biden's also going to run again. How old will he be on election day 2024 - 82? It would be pretty funny if he died of old age a couple months before election day. It would demoralize the dems (Our guy is dead!) and give the GOP a fantastic bump of base enthusiasm (Their guy is dead!).
You have more faith than I do that he won't just conk out at some point during his presidency (or have one of his dogs maul him)
conk out
I made a joke about that in another comment. He runs for reelection and a couple months before election day 2024 - he dies of old age.
Another possibility is that his mind starts to go.
one of his dogs maul him
Best day ever.
An enterprising right-wing Twitter troll could tweet - "Don't put down Champ! I wanna adopt him!" - and get a zillion likes.
None of those arguments were meant to hold up. They exist only to plug the holes in the "would you rather have Trump?" discussion. They were presented as true and or being grounded in some kind of objective reality but if you stopped to reflect on 2008-2016 for two seconds it was immediately obvious that it was nonsense. But you're the unreasonable, unrealistic Berniebro and so there isn't much reason to defend this argument from the respectable center as it's largely tied to the thought terminating cliché of "would you rather have Trump?". Biden in any line of argumentation, if you took the time to unpack it, was in the superposition of almost as good as Bernie and not a radical, someone who could pull white moderates. Both of these couldn't be true.
It was kind of obscene that the argument he listened to the changing will of the people to handwave his direct hand in many of the issues he was promising to address. Unfortunately for liberals, they seem to love outing themselves in their memoirs (a tangentially related aside, when HRC described her slave staff in the
AKAR governor's mansion, the inmates who were staff were convicted of assault/murder and specifically chosen because they presented no danger, begging the question why are they still incarcerated). Obama's most recent memoir giving away that if you network and fundraise among the high net worth crowd, you subconsciously adopt and begin to consider the class interests of those donors first. As Obama described it, literally becomes your ideology. Biden hadn't and wouldn't change. He simply got a marketing facelift.Furthermore, it is obvious that battle lines are premediated behind closed doors and liberals kowtow around intraparty consensus in a party that runs the ideological spectrum from pro LGBT neocon to DSA-M4A-regieme change. Seeking bipartisanship is the cherry on top to guarantee no change while being able to lay the failure at the feet of a few individuals. Individuals who will be shielded by vote blue no matter who with no real introspection into the functional difference between an pro-LGBT neocon and a neocon. At the Federal level there is none. Not a finger in Congress has been lifted to protect trans comrades from barbaric state legislation.
Nah I'm pretty sure it's assault rifle.
I have one myself, I like shooting my Assault Rifle 15
You're only that asshole if the correction if pedantic nonsense. Appreciate the correction!!
Well, Bernie has definitely shown everyone that he can compromise.
:biden-troll:
listen jack! You gotta do as I say and I'll give up!
It held up absolutely zero, because the GOP doesn't play that game (unless it's on the military because there's always more money for bombs).
The only significant legislataion Biden has accomplished so far was the covid bill, which was not bipartisan. He's currently trying to reach a compromise on infrastructure which will result in either 1) a watered down bill that won't meet our needs or 2) no deal followed by a partisan bill that will be better but still not enough.
That's not even necessarily a knock against Biden specifically. Bipartisanship and compromise have never accomplished anything good. Presidents only accomplish things when they have control of Congress and can get things done without needing votes from the other party, and even that isn't always enough (see: Obama, Barack).
Biden already wants what neoliberal goons want and does a little dance about "negotiation" that's just "moving" right to the position he had all along.
So yes but also it's bad.
