This is why I am glad he's at the top of the trashheap for 2024... any leftist who might run worth their salt would drag him straight into obscurity over all this and more.
I don’t see any Soc-Dem candidate getting far in that awful party
The fact that Bernie got as far as he did despite the media (a) trying to anoint Biden from the start and (b) alternately blacking him out and giving him laughably biased coverage shows this isn't true. Democrats aren't competent enough fend off any challenger, no matter how popular. Look at how they're trying and failing to primary the progressives in Congress. The problem isn't that the party establishment can just select a winner at will; the problem is that the left isn't popular enough -- yet -- to overcome establishment obstruction.
If the party establishment can just pick whoever they want, why was Bernie in the lead going into Super Tuesday? Why have any progressives gotten elected anywhere, and why are they now facing (and beating) centrist primary challengers?
You can't simultaneously believe Democrats are incompetent enough to lose 2016 and maybe 2020, too, but also believe they have complete and total control over their primaries.
He lost. Does every loss mean the game was 100% rigged right from the start? Of course not.
you can’t believe winning was more important to them than stopping Bernie
Democrats absolutely prioritize winning on their own terms (i.e., not with Bernie) over winning, period, but that doesn't mean they can just go god mode on a primary and pick whatever candidate they want. Again, there is ample evidence to the contrary in the form of progressives winning elections and then defeating well-funded centrist primary challengers.
Bernie did not have a shot. It was always a game of chicken to see how far they'd be willing to let the mask slip. He didn't get far enough to force their hand, but that's what would've happened.
And they do cheat. The question is what -- realistically -- they can do to stop a leftist candidate with even more support than Bernie. I don't think in that case they'll just cancel the primary and pick a different candidate, even if they technically can. The whole reason they're worried about the mask slipping is that if they don't even pretend to be responsive to their base they'll collapse. The hard fact here is that Bernie supporters aren't the base, or at least aren't enough of the base to get the establishment truly worried. The task is changing that to where the left can't be ignored.
bitch, there's a pandemic killing hundreds of thousands, 40% of the country is being evicted, and climate change looms like an existential threat - and you want to sit here and talk about the 2024 blue primary? who the fuck cares? odds are there won't be a coherent entity called the United States by then and you're worried about your fucking soap opera. get a grip
over the next two months, a staggering number of people will face evictions. a staggering number of people will go hungry. a staggering number of people will be devastated by the on-going economic collapse. through it all, the state is not merely choosing not to act - it cannot. the ruling class is divided, practically at a breaking point between the two major factions as is, and very busy looting what remains of the petit-bourgeoisie, fighting over consolidation of market monopolies, etc.. economic subsidies to the (lumpen)proles or petit-bourgeoisie would interrupt this profit machine at a time when virtually no other profit is being extracted. so they're stuck doing what they're doing. that leaves the state at a deadlock, one that has been growing more and more intense for a full decade. the election cannot resolve the crisis because neither candidate fundamentally wants to change anything. the next election is for control of Congress in 2022 and it will remain gridlocked because any populist wave will run into an unsympathetic white house, however this election turns out. the election after that is almost five years after the start of the crisis. so elections will not provide relief. states will have to do their own thing - indeed there's already a brewing power struggle between the federal government and the states their authority to solve these problems themselves. it's likely the courts will uphold the power of the federal government over the states on this.
that means that in the next two months, a staggering number of people will get directly fucked by a system that has tied its own hands behind its back. it's only tool? repression. when people take the streets demanding bread and the government meets it with repression, the sheer scope of the number of people it's attempting to repress will force its immediate collapse. it will happen so fast that we might blink and miss it. one day people will be protesting, then there will be blood, and then there will be a wave of strikes and action directed against the state a la our May Days.
the election will proceed, whatever that means, with likely the military overseeing it and what happens going forward from there depends entirely on the quality of the response from the military and the immediate concessions made by the ruling class. we're looking at 2 decades of serious Instability.
Sure, anything's possible, but it's ridiculous to be "damn sure" of any of that. Odds are the most powerful country in the history of the planet will continue to exist in a recognizable form for at least another four years.
Guaranteeing anything four years in the future is silly, especially when your prediction involves a police state with nukes (and no history of popular, organized rebellion) collapsing. We're going to be stuck dealing with this shit until we change it.
If you think every time you lose the game was rigged against you, I don't know what to tell you. You're just detached from reality at that point.
These aren't Machiavellian super-geniuses we're up against. We're up against a party that has all sorts of policy and demographic advantages and still manages to piss down their leg often enough to run a minority of the country. And you honestly think they're impossible to beat?
"Democrat Party" is literally a focus-grouped Republican smear. We can criticize Democrats without using reactionary propaganda.
M4A has overwhelmingly positive reception
And most people weren't voting on that issue alone, because "dang cheeto in the White House" centrist messaging was more effective than the messaging coming out of the left. We have to actually convince people to vote for leftist candidates; we can't just point to a poll that says something is popular and hope.
they're referring to Frank Luntz's advice to the GOP to use "democrat" instead of "democratic" as if that kind of wizardry is why dems lose and not because their job is to fight the left and they haven't delivered material benefits for four decades
That type of advertising bullshit absolutely makes a difference in close races. And because Democrats' "job is to fight for the left and they haven’t delivered material benefits for four decades," they're always in close races.
I mean fuck that, even. There isn't time to replace them with a working class party, either.
People don't understand how fucked the electoral project is at this juncture. You'd need like 65 Senate seats, the entire house, and then to fire and pack the entire judiciary just to get started.
At which point the CIA or DoD would merk you without a second thought, if it could even get that far.
There is no electoral path forward for the left with the time that's left. There just isn't.
Imagine having faith in liberal democracy lmao. You really think that we just have to win the hearts and minds of a reactionary nation and then some day, maybe in 2042 we will get an Imperialist succdem in office who will not be able to pass anything? You really think this country has the time to do the outreach it would take to change democrats to """"socialists""""? do you think there will still be elections by then?
You really think that we just have to win the hearts and minds of a reactionary nation
Uh yeah, if we build a movement too big to ignore we can win. That's the whole premise here. Do you have a better plan? I'm all ears.
You really think this country has the time to do the outreach it would take to change democrats to “”"“socialists”"""
Look at how fast the material conditions of ordinary Americans are changing. All that's needed are people who can explain why that's happening and provide a better alternative. And again, if you have a better plan that will work more quickly, I'm all ears. I just don't see one.
I wrote a long reply then auto-update erased it so I'm just going to say that the US is headed towards fascism and nobody is prepared for it. The crisis of capitalism will not radicalize everyone by itself, most people in the US are petit bourgeois and will want to return to that class position. We need to be ready to fight that. We need to have more guns on our side because political power grows out of their barrels. We need to be organized and disciplined.
We need to be ready to fight that. We need to have more guns on our side because political power grows out of their barrels. We need to be organized and disciplined.
To add to that: we need a lot more people on our side than we had in the 2020 primary.
If we can't win a primary, talking about a revolutionary left is laughable. You need people to put their lives on the line in a revolution -- we didn't even get enough people to go stand in line and fucking vote.
I'm as pessimistic about electoralism as you are, I'm just more pessimistic about everything else because any other path to a better future requires a lot more work and a lot more committed support than winning an election.
we didn’t even get enough people to go stand in line and fucking vote.
Being fair: None of the states voted before Bernie dropped, besides like 5. The primary system being dragged out as long as it was is an issue. You throw in closed-primaries in certain states and that double's the problem. A lot of independents leaned Bernie over the Democratic registered party members and couldn't vote him by the time he dropped because of those rules.
None of the states voted before Bernie dropped, besides like 5.
This isn't really accurate. Only a handful of states voted before the other candidates dropped out and endorsed Biden, but Super Tuesday happened with Bernie still in the race and he lost conclusively. We didn't even get probably a third of the Democratic primary electorate to sign on for an extremely moderate left alternative to maybe the worst centrist candidate. That's not anywhere near the type of popular support needed for a revolution.
If there are somehow a bunch of people that are willing to pick up a gun and get shot at for socialism, but who aren't willing to vote for something as obvious as universal healthcare, sure, let's put our eggs in a non-electoral basket. I just don't see anyway that's happening, though, at least not right now. We have to get a lot more people on our side.
My point is more: Super Tuesday took forever to get to and even then we shouldn't have a "Super Tuesday" and then a trickle of about 30-35 states primaries after that. The primary system in general is dumb because of how long the process takes.
I would've voted/nominated Sanders in the primary full-stop. But 1) By the time the state I'm in would've gotten to it: He dropped out/Super Tuesday's "rigging" happened and his chances were sank. and 2) the state I'm in would require me to change my party nomination to nominate him (or Trump or any other Republican) in their primaries.
I'm sure there's a lot of younger voters that aren't registered in either party that would be excluded on #2 and even if they weren't couldn't get a chance to have their voice heard due to #1/long primary voting process.
OK, it's dumb. But if the left can't figure out a game designed by politics dorks because it's complicated or it takes too long, how the hell is the left supposed to win a revolution? Or how the hell is the left supposed to organize protracted general strikes? Or how the hell is the left supposed to do any significant non-electoral strategy, because at bottom they're all more complicated than a primary and require something closer to actual sacrifice.
That's my main issue with people who talk about abandoning electoralism completely: they stuff they're suggesting as alternatives won't work until we have widespread popular support, and I don't see a way of gaining widespread popular support that doesn't involve (at least in part) doing politics the way most Americans think politics are done (i.e., through elections). The fastest way to build a leftist movement is to have popular leftist candidates running in races people care about. If you win you win; if you lose you still get leftist ideas out there to people we need to persuade.
We live in a post truth time, none of this shit fucking matters. Trump tells like 400 lies a minute and still has 90+ Republican support and a 30% chance of winning the election. Libs will support Coumo because "he said the right things" and ignore the actual reality of the situation. For a leftist to drag him over it they'd have to straight up call him a grandparent murderer and chant lock him up or something and frame him that way. Simply stating how bad the crisis got won't work, post truth and all that.
Republicans are completely post-truth, but Democrats are at least occasionally willing to hold candidates to their record. The problem is that stuff the left views as disqualifying isn't that big of a deal to most centrist Democrats.
If the democrats are not post truth please explain how Coumo, the person with by far the worst material outcome in the coronavirus crisis, tops this list. To me, as an outsider, the democrats are post truth, but in a different way to republicans. They use talking points like "facts first" while they lie and manipulate statistics to match their worldview (see Kamala Harris votes 93% of the time with Bernie for an example of this).
"Well I mean, he did the best he could with the hand he'd been dealt."
If they acknowledge Medicaid cuts at all "he needed to free up the funds to attack Covid in other ways" (don't expect them to explain how that's supposed to work)
please explain how Coumo, the person with by far the worst material outcome in the coronavirus crisis, tops this list
Easy: no one gives a shit about primary candidates until a week or two before they vote. They definitely don't give a shit about a candidate who hasn't announced anything because the primary is four years out.
He's a name people know, so of course he gets mentioned.
The media is pushing him because twitter slapfights with Trump sell, and because he's a standard-issue capitalist Democrat who isn't going to rock any boats if elected.
they’re straight up pretending that Biden/Harris is tHe mOsT pRoGrEsSiVe tIcKeT yet
Because they are looking at their current positions, ignoring their record, limiting the scope to candidates nominated for president, and using the most charitable definition possible for "progressive." It's a bad argument, but it's at least based on some part of reality.
That's not the same as pointing to any bit of reality one doesn't like and calling it fake news.
So they don’t really hold candidates to their records
But sure, occasionally they do.
See? We can both be petty assholes who deliberately misread what the other is writing. Let's not do this.
The "occasionally" point is a big one, and it's not exclusively used on the left. Other candidates were attacked over their records in the primaries, and if you talk to your average Democrat about a candidate's record you're going to get a different response than if you talk to your average Republican. If you talk to a Democrat about Biden's shitty stance on climate change you'll get all sorts of excuses or attempted justifications, but at bottom they'll agree that climate change is a real problem. If you talk to a Republican about any Republican's shitty stance on the same issue, there's a good chance you'll get some denial of the reality of the base issue. Similarly, if you bring up Biden's "racial jungle" quote to a Democrat, they'll acknowledge the reality of the quote even if they try to defend it somehow. If you bring up some Trump quote to a Republican there's a good chance they'll claim he never said that, or that it's fake news, or that it's some Democratic hit job, etc.
If someone acknowledges the basic facts of reality you can educate them or reason with them. You can't do that with people who just write off stuff they don't like as fake.
Ask a Biden supporter about Tara Reade. How is discrediting and denying a story any different than saying “fake news”?
It's not. The difference is between pulling this with some things you don't like, and doing this with everything you don't like. If someone pulls this occasionally, it's frustrating and they're a piece of shit, but you can at least work with them the rest of the time and maybe bring them around. If someone pulls this every time there's something they don't like, how are you supposed to get anywhere with that?
This is why I am glad he's at the top of the trashheap for 2024... any leftist who might run worth their salt would drag him straight into obscurity over all this and more.
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This is straight-up Republican crank speak, FYI.
The fact that Bernie got as far as he did despite the media (a) trying to anoint Biden from the start and (b) alternately blacking him out and giving him laughably biased coverage shows this isn't true. Democrats aren't competent enough fend off any challenger, no matter how popular. Look at how they're trying and failing to primary the progressives in Congress. The problem isn't that the party establishment can just select a winner at will; the problem is that the left isn't popular enough -- yet -- to overcome establishment obstruction.
lmao suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuüuuuuuuure
If the party establishment can just pick whoever they want, why was Bernie in the lead going into Super Tuesday? Why have any progressives gotten elected anywhere, and why are they now facing (and beating) centrist primary challengers?
You can't simultaneously believe Democrats are incompetent enough to lose 2016 and maybe 2020, too, but also believe they have complete and total control over their primaries.
cool what happened after that?
you can't believe winning was more important to them than stopping Bernie
He lost. Does every loss mean the game was 100% rigged right from the start? Of course not.
Democrats absolutely prioritize winning on their own terms (i.e., not with Bernie) over winning, period, but that doesn't mean they can just go god mode on a primary and pick whatever candidate they want. Again, there is ample evidence to the contrary in the form of progressives winning elections and then defeating well-funded centrist primary challengers.
Yes, they literally can.
Like, do you just not know this? They've done it before.
Primaries are not legally binding. And they don't even have to run them fairly. They could literally cheat and it would be legal.
They have argued this successfully in court .
Bernie did not have a shot. It was always a game of chicken to see how far they'd be willing to let the mask slip. He didn't get far enough to force their hand, but that's what would've happened.
And they do cheat. The question is what -- realistically -- they can do to stop a leftist candidate with even more support than Bernie. I don't think in that case they'll just cancel the primary and pick a different candidate, even if they technically can. The whole reason they're worried about the mask slipping is that if they don't even pretend to be responsive to their base they'll collapse. The hard fact here is that Bernie supporters aren't the base, or at least aren't enough of the base to get the establishment truly worried. The task is changing that to where the left can't be ignored.
bitch, there's a pandemic killing hundreds of thousands, 40% of the country is being evicted, and climate change looms like an existential threat - and you want to sit here and talk about the 2024 blue primary? who the fuck cares? odds are there won't be a coherent entity called the United States by then and you're worried about your fucking soap opera. get a grip
Do you really think the United States is just going to... fade away by 2024?
no, but I'm damn sure it will be (pick your favorite):
By what process do you expect the US to collapse into any of those in the next 4 years? I don't really see it happening that fast.
over the next two months, a staggering number of people will face evictions. a staggering number of people will go hungry. a staggering number of people will be devastated by the on-going economic collapse. through it all, the state is not merely choosing not to act - it cannot. the ruling class is divided, practically at a breaking point between the two major factions as is, and very busy looting what remains of the petit-bourgeoisie, fighting over consolidation of market monopolies, etc.. economic subsidies to the (lumpen)proles or petit-bourgeoisie would interrupt this profit machine at a time when virtually no other profit is being extracted. so they're stuck doing what they're doing. that leaves the state at a deadlock, one that has been growing more and more intense for a full decade. the election cannot resolve the crisis because neither candidate fundamentally wants to change anything. the next election is for control of Congress in 2022 and it will remain gridlocked because any populist wave will run into an unsympathetic white house, however this election turns out. the election after that is almost five years after the start of the crisis. so elections will not provide relief. states will have to do their own thing - indeed there's already a brewing power struggle between the federal government and the states their authority to solve these problems themselves. it's likely the courts will uphold the power of the federal government over the states on this.
that means that in the next two months, a staggering number of people will get directly fucked by a system that has tied its own hands behind its back. it's only tool? repression. when people take the streets demanding bread and the government meets it with repression, the sheer scope of the number of people it's attempting to repress will force its immediate collapse. it will happen so fast that we might blink and miss it. one day people will be protesting, then there will be blood, and then there will be a wave of strikes and action directed against the state a la our May Days.
the election will proceed, whatever that means, with likely the military overseeing it and what happens going forward from there depends entirely on the quality of the response from the military and the immediate concessions made by the ruling class. we're looking at 2 decades of serious Instability.
Interesting read. Given what's happened so far, it's certainly possible.
Sure, anything's possible, but it's ridiculous to be "damn sure" of any of that. Odds are the most powerful country in the history of the planet will continue to exist in a recognizable form for at least another four years.
When you definitely have a grip on the history of capitalist states in times of capitalist crisis.
Guaranteeing anything four years in the future is silly, especially when your prediction involves a police state with nukes (and no history of popular, organized rebellion) collapsing. We're going to be stuck dealing with this shit until we change it.
I'm sure this time you'll win your table scraps
absolutely fucking smoothbrained. pathetic.
If you think every time you lose the game was rigged against you, I don't know what to tell you. You're just detached from reality at that point.
These aren't Machiavellian super-geniuses we're up against. We're up against a party that has all sorts of policy and demographic advantages and still manages to piss down their leg often enough to run a minority of the country. And you honestly think they're impossible to beat?
I've been paying attention to primaries for decades, you didn't even pay attention to the last one
I'm sure you were studying the blade real good.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)
"Democrat Party" is literally a focus-grouped Republican smear. We can criticize Democrats without using reactionary propaganda.
And most people weren't voting on that issue alone, because "dang cheeto in the White House" centrist messaging was more effective than the messaging coming out of the left. We have to actually convince people to vote for leftist candidates; we can't just point to a poll that says something is popular and hope.
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they're referring to Frank Luntz's advice to the GOP to use "democrat" instead of "democratic" as if that kind of wizardry is why dems lose and not because their job is to fight the left and they haven't delivered material benefits for four decades
That type of advertising bullshit absolutely makes a difference in close races. And because Democrats' "job is to fight for the left and they haven’t delivered material benefits for four decades," they're always in close races.
No dude, he's right. Its technical name is the Democratic Party.
This is a 1990s Republican troll move. They started calling it the Democrat Party.
When Democrats went to correct them, they'd call them out for being elitists. So they eventually just gave up on it, because they lose either way.
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Oh yeah for sure.
I mean fuck that, even. There isn't time to replace them with a working class party, either.
People don't understand how fucked the electoral project is at this juncture. You'd need like 65 Senate seats, the entire house, and then to fire and pack the entire judiciary just to get started.
At which point the CIA or DoD would merk you without a second thought, if it could even get that far.
There is no electoral path forward for the left with the time that's left. There just isn't.
It's not the party's name, that's the whole point.
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Ah yes, repeating literal Republican talking points is what true leftists do. Only a liberal would try to avoid that.
you're a simpleton. fuck off
Outstanding contribution
eat my shit and hair
post hog
shut the fuck up, liberal
Imagine having faith in liberal democracy lmao. You really think that we just have to win the hearts and minds of a reactionary nation and then some day, maybe in 2042 we will get an Imperialist succdem in office who will not be able to pass anything? You really think this country has the time to do the outreach it would take to change democrats to """"socialists""""? do you think there will still be elections by then?
Uh yeah, if we build a movement too big to ignore we can win. That's the whole premise here. Do you have a better plan? I'm all ears.
Look at how fast the material conditions of ordinary Americans are changing. All that's needed are people who can explain why that's happening and provide a better alternative. And again, if you have a better plan that will work more quickly, I'm all ears. I just don't see one.
I wrote a long reply then auto-update erased it so I'm just going to say that the US is headed towards fascism and nobody is prepared for it. The crisis of capitalism will not radicalize everyone by itself, most people in the US are petit bourgeois and will want to return to that class position. We need to be ready to fight that. We need to have more guns on our side because political power grows out of their barrels. We need to be organized and disciplined.
This blows, yeah.
To add to that: we need a lot more people on our side than we had in the 2020 primary.
I swear to God say primary one more time
If we can't win a primary, talking about a revolutionary left is laughable. You need people to put their lives on the line in a revolution -- we didn't even get enough people to go stand in line and fucking vote.
I'm as pessimistic about electoralism as you are, I'm just more pessimistic about everything else because any other path to a better future requires a lot more work and a lot more committed support than winning an election.
Being fair: None of the states voted before Bernie dropped, besides like 5. The primary system being dragged out as long as it was is an issue. You throw in closed-primaries in certain states and that double's the problem. A lot of independents leaned Bernie over the Democratic registered party members and couldn't vote him by the time he dropped because of those rules.
This isn't really accurate. Only a handful of states voted before the other candidates dropped out and endorsed Biden, but Super Tuesday happened with Bernie still in the race and he lost conclusively. We didn't even get probably a third of the Democratic primary electorate to sign on for an extremely moderate left alternative to maybe the worst centrist candidate. That's not anywhere near the type of popular support needed for a revolution.
If there are somehow a bunch of people that are willing to pick up a gun and get shot at for socialism, but who aren't willing to vote for something as obvious as universal healthcare, sure, let's put our eggs in a non-electoral basket. I just don't see anyway that's happening, though, at least not right now. We have to get a lot more people on our side.
My point is more: Super Tuesday took forever to get to and even then we shouldn't have a "Super Tuesday" and then a trickle of about 30-35 states primaries after that. The primary system in general is dumb because of how long the process takes.
I would've voted/nominated Sanders in the primary full-stop. But 1) By the time the state I'm in would've gotten to it: He dropped out/Super Tuesday's "rigging" happened and his chances were sank. and 2) the state I'm in would require me to change my party nomination to nominate him (or Trump or any other Republican) in their primaries.
I'm sure there's a lot of younger voters that aren't registered in either party that would be excluded on #2 and even if they weren't couldn't get a chance to have their voice heard due to #1/long primary voting process.
OK, it's dumb. But if the left can't figure out a game designed by politics dorks because it's complicated or it takes too long, how the hell is the left supposed to win a revolution? Or how the hell is the left supposed to organize protracted general strikes? Or how the hell is the left supposed to do any significant non-electoral strategy, because at bottom they're all more complicated than a primary and require something closer to actual sacrifice.
That's my main issue with people who talk about abandoning electoralism completely: they stuff they're suggesting as alternatives won't work until we have widespread popular support, and I don't see a way of gaining widespread popular support that doesn't involve (at least in part) doing politics the way most Americans think politics are done (i.e., through elections). The fastest way to build a leftist movement is to have popular leftist candidates running in races people care about. If you win you win; if you lose you still get leftist ideas out there to people we need to persuade.
imagine thinking facts matter— did you not see what the media invented about Corbyn and Bernie this time?
We live in a post truth time, none of this shit fucking matters. Trump tells like 400 lies a minute and still has 90+ Republican support and a 30% chance of winning the election. Libs will support Coumo because "he said the right things" and ignore the actual reality of the situation. For a leftist to drag him over it they'd have to straight up call him a grandparent murderer and chant lock him up or something and frame him that way. Simply stating how bad the crisis got won't work, post truth and all that.
Republicans are completely post-truth, but Democrats are at least occasionally willing to hold candidates to their record. The problem is that stuff the left views as disqualifying isn't that big of a deal to most centrist Democrats.
If the democrats are not post truth please explain how Coumo, the person with by far the worst material outcome in the coronavirus crisis, tops this list. To me, as an outsider, the democrats are post truth, but in a different way to republicans. They use talking points like "facts first" while they lie and manipulate statistics to match their worldview (see Kamala Harris votes 93% of the time with Bernie for an example of this).
"Well I mean, he did the best he could with the hand he'd been dealt."
If they acknowledge Medicaid cuts at all "he needed to free up the funds to attack Covid in other ways" (don't expect them to explain how that's supposed to work)
That's what I mean by the democrats being post truth, none of those reasons make any sense
Oh I wasn't disagreeing with you.
I know I was just commenting on the excuses, should have been more clear
Easy: no one gives a shit about primary candidates until a week or two before they vote. They definitely don't give a shit about a candidate who hasn't announced anything because the primary is four years out.
He's a name people know, so of course he gets mentioned.
Ok you got me there, still find interesting that the media pushed Coumo so hard when his initial covid response was a massive failure
The media is pushing him because twitter slapfights with Trump sell, and because he's a standard-issue capitalist Democrat who isn't going to rock any boats if elected.
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Because they are looking at their current positions, ignoring their record, limiting the scope to candidates nominated for president, and using the most charitable definition possible for "progressive." It's a bad argument, but it's at least based on some part of reality.
That's not the same as pointing to any bit of reality one doesn't like and calling it fake news.
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See? We can both be petty assholes who deliberately misread what the other is writing. Let's not do this.
The "occasionally" point is a big one, and it's not exclusively used on the left. Other candidates were attacked over their records in the primaries, and if you talk to your average Democrat about a candidate's record you're going to get a different response than if you talk to your average Republican. If you talk to a Democrat about Biden's shitty stance on climate change you'll get all sorts of excuses or attempted justifications, but at bottom they'll agree that climate change is a real problem. If you talk to a Republican about any Republican's shitty stance on the same issue, there's a good chance you'll get some denial of the reality of the base issue. Similarly, if you bring up Biden's "racial jungle" quote to a Democrat, they'll acknowledge the reality of the quote even if they try to defend it somehow. If you bring up some Trump quote to a Republican there's a good chance they'll claim he never said that, or that it's fake news, or that it's some Democratic hit job, etc.
If someone acknowledges the basic facts of reality you can educate them or reason with them. You can't do that with people who just write off stuff they don't like as fake.
It's not. The difference is between pulling this with some things you don't like, and doing this with everything you don't like. If someone pulls this occasionally, it's frustrating and they're a piece of shit, but you can at least work with them the rest of the time and maybe bring them around. If someone pulls this every time there's something they don't like, how are you supposed to get anywhere with that?