After Biden's meltdown, the Democrats are hoping to reenergize people with a supposedly "progressive" pick for Kamala Harris' running mate.

      • Amerikan Pharaoh@lemmygrad.ml
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        edit-2
        5 months ago

        Yeah, there's an increasingly smaller pool of simultaneously non-white and non-zionist Democrats, few enough that I expect the last few holdouts to be swept away by the end of the year. Mark my words, this time next year, the DNC will only be genocidal white ghouls and their coon-assed minstrels in the Congressional Misleadership Caucus.

  • Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml
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    5 months ago

    I remember the early days of the Biden presidency when he was being hailed a progressive. Seems like Liberals haven't anything.

  • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
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    5 months ago

    "Progressive" is such an empty word to begin with. It's like when calling someone a reformer is too far, so they use an even weaker word to describe what they do. "Sometimes they may do stuff that isn't 100% cartoonishly evil. So progressive."

    The standards for the democrat party are in the sewer.

  • bunbun@lemmygrad.ml
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    5 months ago

    As far as the real options go, you literally couldn't have had better? Yeah he's not a MLM, what a surprise. But I'll take a governor who has a record of directly improving people's lives - school breakfast and lunch, Pre-K, time off for parents, abortion/trans/IVF rights, gun regulations, ecological legislation, etc. To say that it's a "fake progressive" by the standards of the democratic party is insane, who the fuck isn't then? Even on Palestine he's the "stop the fighting, two-state solution", which is as radical as a politician can possibly get regarding US foreign policy.

    • multitotal@lemmygrad.ml
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      5 months ago

      If the Democrats cared so much, why isn't he the presidential candidate? He's only on the ticket to legitimise Kamala to "progressives", he's going to be sidelined if she's elected.

        • -6-6-6-@lemmygrad.ml
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          edit-2
          5 months ago

          Always the same, smug fuckin' response. None of this. None of this at all. More riots that Tim Walz crushed with his national guard dogs would be preferable; just without Walz or the national guard. Sporadic springs and uprisings against the police state brutally murdering people without justice. That would be preferable as an alternative, actually. The best alternative would be more people organizing.

          Oooooh, you mean what would we prefer if we were forced to play the electoral game? I dunno, whatever one the electoral college or DNC picks for us!

        • Shinhoshi@lemmygrad.ml
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          5 months ago

          They just gave you one for instance — him or someone with similar positions could have been the presumptive nominee back in March.

          Obviously, communism is a better alternative to anything electoralism is going to provide.

          Yes, for a US politician, this is probably about as good as you get. That is a massive caveat though and it's our job to remind people that.

    • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
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      edit-2
      5 months ago

      Even on Palestine he's the "stop the fighting, two-state solution"

      Is he calling for a complete stop to any and all aid to the genocidal Zionist psychopaths? No? Then everything else is just lip service. Come back to us when you have a candidate who will refuse to give weapons and money to child murdering rapists, then maybe we'll think about whether "progressives" are worth anything.

      • bunbun@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        5 months ago

        On one hand you have this fake progressive guy:

        https://x.com/prem_thakker/status/1820824112165429293

        https://x.com/prem_thakker/status/1820833101200699409

        And the other option was this:

        During the wave of campus protests against the war this spring, Shapiro compared protesters to white supremacists and the KKK, contributing to rhetoric that led to state and vigilante violence against protesters across the country. He applauded the decision to send police to disband a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Pennsylvania, even though the school’s own faculty members condemned the “arrests and suppression of non-violent, anti-war protests” after riot gear-clad forces cleared and arrested students.

        I stg whenever positive American politics or policies come up, this community throws out the dialectics and defaults to "america bad". Tim Walz is better for the country than every other option that was on the table, all the Newsoms and Buttigieges of the dem party. This is not a point of contention, this is the material conditions that we're under.

        • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
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          edit-2
          5 months ago

          I stg whenever positive American politics or policies come up, this community throws out the dialectics and defaults to “america bad”.

          Serious question because I honestly don't know what your train of thought is on this: what is supposed to be dialectical about standing behind the vote blue no matter who crowd? It's no secret that the line between democrat and republican in the US is so paper thin as to be almost meaningless by this point. Enough people, however many of them may have included communists or not, went with that mentality in pushing Trump out to get Biden in. And Biden funded and supported an ongoing genocide. There's nothing I can find indicating Harris would be better on the genocide position than Biden was. And we can safely assume that if that kind of power establishment picked Tim Walz, they expect the same from him too. They don't look for the biggest reformer they can find and hope to put them in power. If that were the case, Sanders would have had a real chance, instead of being kneecapped by the "everybody else drop out and support Biden maneuver" in 2020.

          I mean, even Harris herself recently used the line (I may be getting exact wording wrong) "keep doing that if you want Trump" in reference to a protester for Palestine interrupting her speech. This is how openly the line has become "we literally have nothing meaningful to offer you other than saying we're not the other candidate." And yet the track record doesn't even make them notably better by comparison; if it did, they'd have substantive things to point to, wouldn't they? Instead of saying "vote for me because I'm not them."

          So I reiterate, what is dialectical about supporting that? Is it even harm reduction if possibly the most documented in real-time genocide in history is already being supported by their administration? My understanding of dialectical moves like that is you're supposed to be gaining something from them, in the compromise, such as allying with forces who might later turn on you. I don't see what is being gained. How is it even a compromise if there is no exchange? "Here, I support you continuing to have all the power and doing horrific things with it"? What is that accomplishing?

          • bunbun@lemmygrad.ml
            ·
            4 months ago

            "Vote blue no matter who" means that liberals and more progressive people are supposed to support the Dems even if the party is entirely incompetent and outright harmful to the causes people support. Because the Republicans will fuck everything up even more. Harm reduction, right? So I am explaining that the recent decisions of the democrats were finally the opposite of that.

            Tim Walz and his Democratic-Farmer-Labor party's record in one session:

            • Statewide paid family and medical leave for all workers
            • Child tax credits
            • Child care assistance
            • Free school breakfast and lunch for all students
            • Free public college for lower-income families
            • Codified Roe v. Wade
            • Extensive legislation on protecting trans people
            • Banned conversion therapy
            • Labor protections for nurses, teachers and school workers, Uber and Lyft drivers, Amazon workers
            • Banned non-compete agreements
            • Put over a billion into the housing budget. Ten times more than the previous one
            • Background checks and red-flag laws for gun purchases
            • Banned no-knock warrants and white supremacists from pig forces
            • Additional billions in public transit and infrastructure investments, environmental programs
            • Right to repair law

            Each of those issues is widely popular among voters, and are objectively progressive policies. So the Democrats are doing a smart thing by campaigning on them.

            Now on the Palestine issues Kamala is currently doing the exact opposite. Morals aside, since we're talking about the materialist side of politics, this is an incredibly popular issue with Americans, 70% of whom are in support of a permanent ceasefire. The uncommitted movement is going to play a significant role in this election. And if she doesn't present a strong stance on this very soon, she might undo all the good decisions that the Dems made in the past month, like dropping Biden, supporting Kamala, and picking a progressive VP.

            • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
              ·
              4 months ago

              Where are you getting this information? Because this part:

              Labor protections for nurses, teachers and school workers, Uber and Lyft drivers, Amazon workers

              Is in direct contradiction with what's in the OP, claiming he vetoed a bill that would have established minimum pay-rates for Uber and Lyft drivers and has family connections to Uber's top lawyer. As well as gutting a bill to prevent hospitals from understaffing nurses.

  • big_spoon@lemmygrad.ml
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    5 months ago

    he's a democrat at the end of the day, but at least he looks like a less crappy choice than a rape apologist like vance