Trump would probably help the left grow more than Biden
I don't think many people who say this are actually serious about it, because if they were they'd vote Trump. After all, voting is not some moral referendum; it's a (heavily limited) political tactic. Trump = acceleration, and for the reasons stated above the left is not ready for acceleration. You don't seek out a conflict when you're small and disorganized.
Please take a look who gutted M4A and GND, and tell me if Trump can even top that.
You're talking about "gutting" policies that don't even exist and that likely wouldn't exist even if Bernie was the nominee, won, and somehow got a Democratic majority, too. M4A and GND are imaginary at this point, so gutting them doesn't mean anything in the real world. Literally anything Trump does that has real-world consequences is worse.
pretend like everything is OK
What part of "the left needs to grow and organize and needs the best possible environment for that" is "pretending like everything is OK?"
It's not necessarily accelerationism to think that the liberals in a Biden administration would use every ounce of political power to crush the left, rather than the right. Whereas if Biden loses, the liberals will be split between playing defense and punching left. The right doesn't understand the difference between the left and liberals in the first place.
There is also a strong argument to be made that if Biden wins, the Republicans will make gains in state and local, and in congress. It happened extensively under Obama. Then you are weighing one office, the presidency, against a slew of other parts of government. If we're being honest your state and local government has a lot more impact on your day to day life than the president. The people from whom the president matters most are people who live in red states, and not in the city. The people for whom the downballot matters most are people in the swing states. So if you live in Michigan, you might wonder, are you willing to risk getting another Rick Snyder running your state just so Biden can do fuck all in the White House for 4 years, and set Kamala up to lose to Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley or Nikki Haley or some other asshole who is much more competent ghoul than Trump?
There is also a strong argument to be made that if Biden wins, the Republicans will make gains in state and local, and in congress.
Why wouldn't that happen under a hypothetical Sanders administration? "We're better off with the GOP in office because otherwise the GOP will win more lower seats" can't be the logic all the time, or else we'd just willingly hand over the keys to them every four years. I'd wager at least part of the answer is that a black man with an exotic-sounding name breaks chud brains in a way a white guy named "Joe" won't.
Who can know for sure, but I think the fact that the Sanders administration would be doggedly focused on addressing all of the pain points and kitchen table issues people are experiencing. If he was the "organizer in chief" I think is a radically different scenario from what Obama did (he basically dismantled his massive grassroots apparatus when he won) and surely would be different from what Biden will do if he wins.
doggedly focused on addressing all of the pain points and kitchen table issues
Another part of what got Democrats beaten badly in 2010 was Obama promising the moon and then disappointing. He was Hope and Change, and instead we got a bare-minimum economic recovery and zero movement on ending our forever wars. Even Obamacare was a letdown -- it was the mildest reform he could get away with and the dismantling of it was started almost immediately.
No one is expecting anything from Biden other than "not Trump."
Doesn’t that say something about how good or bad he really is for the left? There’s a lot of tension between “Trump would be better than Biden for the left” and “no fucking way would I ever vote for Trump.”
"Better" implies Trump would actually good. I don't like to use that word. I prefer to say "Trump would be slightly less apocalyptically bad than Biden" for the left.
There's two bad choices for the left, which is why I'm not participating. But if we're spinning out which future scenario would more likely lead to less shitty outcomes for leftists, it's the one that gets us closer to wiping out the Democratic Party completely, since they are the more immediate threat to leftists having viable political alternatives, far more than Republicans are.
No self respecting leftist is going to vote for Trump
Doesn't that say something about how good or bad he really is for the left? There's a lot of tension between "Trump would be better than Biden for the left" and "no fucking way would I ever vote for Trump."
So you really think the corporate elites are going to let even a center left soc dem like Bernie Sanders come close to power again?
You could have said the same thing after 2016, yet there he was as the Democratic frontrunner in 2020 through the first four primaries. Corporate elites have enormous sway over elections, but they can't just determine the outcome by flipping a switch. To kneecap Bernie they needed (1) the left not to be too strong, (2) a centrist politician with at least some credible public support, and (3) some coordinating force -- Obama, in this case -- to persuade centrist candidates to drop out on cue. There were other factors that helped them pull it off in 2020, and there are a dozen random things that could have wrapped it up for Bernie no matter what they did (imagine if covid or the Tara Reade story hit two months earlier). And don't forget, Bernie is not an especially strong candidate. He's old, he's not particularly charismatic, he had to create a political base from scratch, he had no allies in the party, and he comes from a state too tiny to have much of an electoral impact. If anything about that situation changes in the future, there's no guarantee they'll be able to job another candidate the way they jobbed Bernie.
But now if his supporters capitulated, the bourgeoisie will not be afraid anymore.
No matter what the left does, the left doesn't get to decide how that's portrayed in the media because the left's media arm is still in its infancy. They're going to try to blame the left for any negative outcome no matter what we do. We can't control the narrative, so the discussion is about what little influence we do have on the end result, and what result we'd prefer.
I don't think many people who say this are actually serious about it, because if they were they'd vote Trump. After all, voting is not some moral referendum; it's a (heavily limited) political tactic. Trump = acceleration, and for the reasons stated above the left is not ready for acceleration. You don't seek out a conflict when you're small and disorganized.
You're talking about "gutting" policies that don't even exist and that likely wouldn't exist even if Bernie was the nominee, won, and somehow got a Democratic majority, too. M4A and GND are imaginary at this point, so gutting them doesn't mean anything in the real world. Literally anything Trump does that has real-world consequences is worse.
What part of "the left needs to grow and organize and needs the best possible environment for that" is "pretending like everything is OK?"
It's not necessarily accelerationism to think that the liberals in a Biden administration would use every ounce of political power to crush the left, rather than the right. Whereas if Biden loses, the liberals will be split between playing defense and punching left. The right doesn't understand the difference between the left and liberals in the first place.
There is also a strong argument to be made that if Biden wins, the Republicans will make gains in state and local, and in congress. It happened extensively under Obama. Then you are weighing one office, the presidency, against a slew of other parts of government. If we're being honest your state and local government has a lot more impact on your day to day life than the president. The people from whom the president matters most are people who live in red states, and not in the city. The people for whom the downballot matters most are people in the swing states. So if you live in Michigan, you might wonder, are you willing to risk getting another Rick Snyder running your state just so Biden can do fuck all in the White House for 4 years, and set Kamala up to lose to Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley or Nikki Haley or some other asshole who is much more competent ghoul than Trump?
Why wouldn't that happen under a hypothetical Sanders administration? "We're better off with the GOP in office because otherwise the GOP will win more lower seats" can't be the logic all the time, or else we'd just willingly hand over the keys to them every four years. I'd wager at least part of the answer is that a black man with an exotic-sounding name breaks chud brains in a way a white guy named "Joe" won't.
Who can know for sure, but I think the fact that the Sanders administration would be doggedly focused on addressing all of the pain points and kitchen table issues people are experiencing. If he was the "organizer in chief" I think is a radically different scenario from what Obama did (he basically dismantled his massive grassroots apparatus when he won) and surely would be different from what Biden will do if he wins.
Another part of what got Democrats beaten badly in 2010 was Obama promising the moon and then disappointing. He was Hope and Change, and instead we got a bare-minimum economic recovery and zero movement on ending our forever wars. Even Obamacare was a letdown -- it was the mildest reform he could get away with and the dismantling of it was started almost immediately.
No one is expecting anything from Biden other than "not Trump."
deleted by creator
Does living in a swing state count as a gun? My liberal vote shaming family and friends are afraid of guns.
"Better" implies Trump would actually good. I don't like to use that word. I prefer to say "Trump would be slightly less apocalyptically bad than Biden" for the left.
There's two bad choices for the left, which is why I'm not participating. But if we're spinning out which future scenario would more likely lead to less shitty outcomes for leftists, it's the one that gets us closer to wiping out the Democratic Party completely, since they are the more immediate threat to leftists having viable political alternatives, far more than Republicans are.
deleted by creator
Doesn't that say something about how good or bad he really is for the left? There's a lot of tension between "Trump would be better than Biden for the left" and "no fucking way would I ever vote for Trump."
You could have said the same thing after 2016, yet there he was as the Democratic frontrunner in 2020 through the first four primaries. Corporate elites have enormous sway over elections, but they can't just determine the outcome by flipping a switch. To kneecap Bernie they needed (1) the left not to be too strong, (2) a centrist politician with at least some credible public support, and (3) some coordinating force -- Obama, in this case -- to persuade centrist candidates to drop out on cue. There were other factors that helped them pull it off in 2020, and there are a dozen random things that could have wrapped it up for Bernie no matter what they did (imagine if covid or the Tara Reade story hit two months earlier). And don't forget, Bernie is not an especially strong candidate. He's old, he's not particularly charismatic, he had to create a political base from scratch, he had no allies in the party, and he comes from a state too tiny to have much of an electoral impact. If anything about that situation changes in the future, there's no guarantee they'll be able to job another candidate the way they jobbed Bernie.
No matter what the left does, the left doesn't get to decide how that's portrayed in the media because the left's media arm is still in its infancy. They're going to try to blame the left for any negative outcome no matter what we do. We can't control the narrative, so the discussion is about what little influence we do have on the end result, and what result we'd prefer.