not voting for trump but low key hope biden doesnt win so the material conditions of a failing America will be on full display
not voting for trump but low key hope biden doesnt win so the material conditions of a failing America will be on full display
You always have to compromise to some degree to get anything done on a national scale. What's bad is making compromise your primary ideological belief, and losing the willingness to maximize the political power you have. But there's a big difference between doing those things and making any sort of compromise, ever.
If AOC is the template for the future of the Democratic party, that's an enormous improvement over the current Democratic party even if it falls far short of ending capitalism. And if she keeps working on the issues she's worked on so far, and doesn't just coast on incumbency and drift to the right, that's going to create more space for leftist challengers, not less.
Marijuana legalization is a good example of how this works in practice. At first you had some states experiment with medical marijuana, that cracked open the door for decriminalization, which cracked open the door for legalization, which has led to actual votes (maybe one has passed even) on decriminalizing or legalizing other recreational drugs. This has also pushed the conversation on the national level; recall that we went from Bill Clinton saying he "experimented" with pot but "did not inhale" to at least one major Democratic candidate talking about ending marijuana prohibition in 2020. None of this happens if you shut down the first steps in the right direction on the grounds that they don't go far enough, fast enough.
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Wasn't that a compromise, though? He didn't end capitalism (as the left of the time wanted to do) -- he created enough safety nets and job programs to keep it going long enough to recover. And even within the New Deal there were compromises. Part of the reason the New Deal didn't do a whole lot for black people is because to pass it FDR needed the votes of Southern Dixiecrats.
I absolutely agree that radical solutions are the only thing that can reverse the effects of climate change at this point. But mitigation? Yes, smaller changes can at least help, and they can help quite a bit. Say we do nothing to actually reduce carbon emissions, but we instead open the southern border, offer a fast-track citizenship process, and stop orchestrating coups (at least in the Western Hemisphere). On the scale of potential changes those aren't radical. Hell, Reagan offered amnesty to immigrants in the 1980s. But they'd mitigate the effects climate change will have on an enormous amount of people. If we're talking about material improvements -- and we should be -- isn't the ability to move to a wealthier country and not be treated as a second-class citizen a material improvement? Isn't the ability to build a leftist government in your home country and not have it hamstrung by capitalist opposition a material improvement?
If we wound the clock back to January and replaced every Democratic politician with an AOC clone, Medicare for All would be at the top of the agenda today, just as it was at the top of Bernie's agenda. There would also be a significant climate change plan (the GND) high on the agenda. You might be right that it would prevent radicalization, but you're wrong that it would just be a dog-and-pony show while nothing material changes, because the whole premise here is that we'd be electing people who are genuinely pushing for big solutions to big problems.
I don't buy that the existence of one fake progressive means all progressives are similarly fake. Shit, we had progressives prior to Obama who did a better job of walking the walk, so we know that Obama isn't the only option.
What leverage did he have? What were his other options? Would Biden in any way be obligated to follow through on any concessions?
Again, we're talking about a situation where the establishment is full of politicians like AOC. There's no one to resist.