• GVAGUY3 [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      Liberals could have had a man who yelled over Trump.

    • _else [she/her,they/them]
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      4 years ago

      yeah, but which would you rather have; socialism or nazism? the dems gave us their answer loud and fucking clear.

    • Phish [he/him, any]
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      4 years ago

      I'm as disappointed in Bernie as the next guy but even watching him react, with pretty lib talking points, to the debate reminds me how much more political awareness and mental acuity he has.

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
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      4 years ago

      Bernie would have killed that debate

      It would have been a very different debate. Wallace would have been far more hostile to Sanders. Trump would have attacked on a different set of issues. There would very likely be a third-party candidate in the race - perhaps even on the stage - doing the Rational Centrist Neoliberal dance in a manner that wasn't garbled into nonsense by senility.

      Nevermind the fact that - as the CNN Sanders / Cruz debate established a while back - Bernie isn't a stellar debater. He's got his message. He knows his facts. But he's not the kind of quick wit that can score meme-able moments and "win". He doesn't have a bunch of canned responses to Own The Libs. He doesn't have an army of corporate media flaks behind him to hype whatever he's saying.

      Like, I'm sorry, but if Bernie was going to win he'd have won in the primaries. He didn't and for the same reason he wouldn't have won against Trump.

      • Barack_Obama [he/him,he/him]
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        4 years ago

        Yeah, the attack would have been different. Heck, Trump came out attacking Biden for kneecapping Bernie.

      • TreesOfWeez [none/use name]
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        4 years ago

        That comment by trump convinced me to vote for Biden to spite trump. Call me a lib all you want, I really like H’20 platform but this debate convince me that voting against Trump’s autocratic neofascist administration is probably more important. But people can’t just vote for Biden and pretend everything is ok. We have to keep the pressure and advancing our platform of reforming the entire system and dismantling of capitalism. Maybe go even further than that if the opportunity arises.

          • TreesOfWeez [none/use name]
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            edit-2
            4 years ago

            I hate that you’re probably right. Part of me wonders if voting for trump specifically might accelerate the massive shift to the left we desperately need. But I couldn’t do that even if I wanted. Rock and hard place, etc.

              • lib_0000429384 [any]
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                4 years ago

                Have you considered getting a weapon and letting a trusted comrade hold onto a part of it until shit hits the fan? At least then you don't have to worry about stock shortages when it's too late.

        • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
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          4 years ago

          How much money are they spending on campaigns, and what does that say about what they want? And if you don't think they want to win, who specifically doesn't want to win? The candidates? Their staff, who get jobs out of winning? Campaign volunteers?

          They want to win the same way you want to eat something when you're blazed. You really want to eat something, but you're not going farther than your kitchen or your front door to make it happen.

          • Comraragi [none/use name]
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            4 years ago

            Don't overanalyze it. Liberal democracy is a show, for libs it is about playing the game, look at all the vote shaming. Remember the primaries Biden didn't even campaign and still managed to win, what you spend, your actual effort is irrelevant.

            They want to put a candidate, they want to appear as if they are fighting. If the goal was to actualy remove Trump we would have a different nominee, Biden wasn't even the best candidate other than Bernie even shitty Warren would destroy Trump here.

            • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
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              4 years ago

              Overanalyzing would be saying: "Despite all the incentives to win, despite the boatload of money spent on winning, and despite literally every Democrat saying how much they want to win, here's why they actually don't want to win."

              • Comraragi [none/use name]
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                4 years ago

                Exhibit #1

                Wanting to win implicitly means doing the most/best you can. If you think Joe Biden is the best democratic presidential candidate available to beat Trump back in March then be my guest. There is an obvious reason we have this walking corpse as a candidate.

                • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
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                  4 years ago

                  Wanting to win implicitly means doing the most/best you can.

                  Not at all; see my example about getting food while high. People want to do all sorts of things without doing everything they can to make it happen.

  • 777 [none/use name]
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    4 years ago

    i think bernie would have done exponentially better at the debates but i also think the right would make the current “he’s a radical leftist” redbaiting tactic they’re using on perc biden look like gentle critique

    like a handful of trump ads conflating succdems with “radical marxist antifa extremists” and h would be looking at brainwashed 63 year old ex-fbi neocon posted outside bernie’s house with the heart attack gun. the fact that they’re getting any mileage with this “radical left” angle on oatmeal brained centrist biden is a testament to how fucked the overton window is at this point

    • Renaissance8 [none/use name]
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      4 years ago

      I think Bernie is ironically better suited to deflect that attack, since he can just go into his "if thinking people shouldn't have to go broke for healthcare makes me a socialist" spiel, whereas Biden can only just whine "no I'm not" over and over again

    • ThisMachinePostsHog [they/them, he/him]
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      4 years ago

      Our country is sooo much more primed for fascism than it is any kind of leftism. I just don’t even want to participate in the American experiment anymore.

      • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
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        4 years ago

        Our country is sooo much more primed for fascism than it is any kind of leftism.

        This is why accelerationism is a terrible idea, at least right now.

    • _else [she/her,they/them]
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      4 years ago

      but sanders likely would have been savvy enough to shift the narrative. and that's what the blues were afraid of. which is why they would rather risk trump2 than even a tiny chance of letting a moderate like sanders win.

      • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
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        4 years ago

        one of them he showed me called Jon Ossoff a radical leftist and a Muslim extremist sympathizer

        the GOP would 100% have been saying Bernie is Stalin and that he wants to genocide the American people

        The takeaway here is that Republicans will call you the devil no matter how far to the right you run.

      • MungBeansAreTerrible [they/them,any]
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        edit-2
        4 years ago

        I don't know how effective any of that would actually be, though, outside of their core base that is going to vote Republican anyway. In a Sanders vs Trump scenario, libs could probably be bullied into voting for Sanders with Supreme Court scaremongering alone.

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
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      edit-2
      4 years ago

      Literally all the parties do anymore.

      Just go out with hat in hand to raise another $100M for TV ads.

  • star_wraith [he/him]
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    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Ratfucking Bernie was the result of the DNC's (short-sighted) calculus: go after white, older, and well-off suburban voters and give the finger to the young voters (of all races) and Hispanic voters that the party will desperately need in the future, on the assumption that they will still vote for Biden because where else are they gonna go. That's a big reason I'm voting for Howie Hawkins, to show the DNC they can't just take our votes for granted and not pay a price.

    It's such a dumb strategy too. All it does is MAYBE give them a slightly better chance at winning the white house in 2020 (still a coin flip at best) at the cost of alienating the future of the party. Even the Biden voters I know under 40 IRL, god they could not be less enthused and they certainly are much more cynical about the Democratic party, and that's not going away after 2020.

  • Koa_lala [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    This debate finally unified the country against electoralism.

    • Randomdog [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      Pete would have been a better choice than Joe. They're both politically tragic but at least Pete doesn't have dementia and they can push the "FIRST GAY PRESIDENT" angle to get all the idpol libs off their asses.

      • darksister [she/her,comrade/them]
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        4 years ago

        in terms of electability, you're right. in terms of better for america... ehh cia people have always been disastrous for this country.