You mean on principal? Those in Congress with principals are on our side. Those without principals can be convinced it's in their best interest. Don't fall for the facade that anything that happens in Congress is ideologically driven.
That's the point of the firebrand President. We have not had a President since FDR who knows how to stand up to special interests and even their own party when necessary.
Oh, Biden himself does actually believe that, but that's true of pretty much every president. I do think it's a little more extreme in his case than for most.
How would I know? The point is that the best thing he can do with his position in the Senate is to look forward. He's not the type to pursue his individual interests at the expense of the cause.
This is something a lot of my compatriots on the left don't seem to get. Good activists don't make good politicians, and good politicians don't make good activists. We need both. Bernie is a politician, and I'm not.
I actually have moved on in a lot of ways, except that I want us to learn from past mistakes so we don't repeat them. I want every person in America to understand how the establishment (of both parties) manipulates the national conversation so we quit falling for the same bullshit.
Look to FDR as a model of what happens when a progressive agenda gets a firebrand President. It's not like the politics were all that different, or Congress any less corrupt.
This wasn't true about Biden. The establishment didn't care who won that primary, as long as it wasn't Bernie. I think Harris was their first choice, but they flipped to Biden when she tanked.
I was explaining why Bernie moved on. I'd love to move on but it seems like every few months Hillary pops up in the media with another sneer.
Anyways, given where all the establishment fuckery of the past 50 years has led us at this particular moment, I feel like a little anger is justified, no?
That's how all campaigns die, a death by a thousand cuts. Such things should be anticipated. Nothing hurt Hillary more in that election than Hillary being Hillary.
As for the emails, they could never have been leaked if they didn't exist in the first place. The complaint is essentially that they got caught. How Trumpian.
Bernie was fucked by the establishment stranglehold over mainstream media, inherent flaws in the primary system, and some truly underhanded tactics. There has been no good evidence of any kind of tampering with the votes.
Bernie has always been a pragmatist. The progressive movement has nothing to gain by him obsessing over sour grapes. Contrast that with Hillary who will live the rest of her life locked into the day she lost.
This year they literally canceled the presidential primary in several states so, no, we don't have a primary every four years.
Radical consolidation of the media industry has largely killed independent journalism. There is a long list of media personalities who were taken off the air for daring to speak the truth. Anchors are selected to represent the establishment perspective on everything. Media ownership and the establishment work together to dominate the narrative. For profit or non-profit is irrelevant. PBS is now as captured as the private networks.
New media caught the establishment by surprise and did manage to make inroads, but that has largely been brought under control. Democrats and Republicans cooperated long enough to pressure social media companies to tweak the algorithm to direct viewers to "trustworthy" news sources, a group that laughably includes FOX News and MS-NBC and excludes independent news providers.
Electing Biden can't preserve democracy where none exists. There was that study out of Stanford that showed zero statistical correlation between the policy desires of voters and what legislation gets passed. We have the facade of democracy, but no actual democracy.
What we do have is the fight for Democracy, and that fight has a much better chance under Biden than Trump. That's not a minor distinction. I will not get behind allowing the Democratic establishment to portray itself as the defender of Democracy. They are democracy's enemies, and they are my enemies. The entire fight for democracy in an age of media manipulation is a fight to pull back that curtain. That fight doesn't stop because of Trump.
Well, at least in the states where they didn't succeed in keeping everyone else off the ballot.
There was no real primary. Even 2020 wasn't a real primary. The fix is in with mainstream media and the major outlets taking their queues from the establishment.
The idea that we have an actual democracy is laughable, and the Democratic party does everything in their power to keep it that way. Biden won in 2020 because the establishment picked him and the media did as they were told. There is no democracy without an independent press.
Biden is a better choice than Trump for a multitude of reasons, but not saving democracy.
Then let's hold a primary.
We can still get back to democracy. This isn't democracy. Did you even read my comment btw? This knee jerk canned response isn't even human.
the only one who decides if he continues is Biden.
Got it.
Biden is who we need to vote for to keep our democracy.
Um, what? Vote Biden to save Democracy, and fuck you if you want a different candidate.
I'll vote for Biden's corpse in 2028 if it's still the only way to keep Trump out of the Whitehouse, but give up the "save Democracy" schtick. That ship has sailed. Democracy is dead, and it's not just the Republican's fault.
The term "court packing" has a very specific meaning. It refers to adding seats to the supreme court to shift the balance.
We have to save democracy from Trump, so we can't afford the luxury of a primary election. /s
The issue wasn't that people didn't show up. There was record turnout for a primary race. The issue was concerns about electability. The talking heads kept repeating incessantly that Biden had the better shot at beating Trump. It was complete bullshit based off polls, but people believed it. Beating Trump was the top priority with policy taking a back seat. The position we are in now is the universe's sense of irony.
The thing that fucks American elections isn't our abysmal turnout. It's the complete lack of civic involvement between elections that makes voters easily malleable by expensive ad campaigns.
By the time the Illinois primary came around, it was already over. He still got my vote, for what it was worth.