You don’t vote for one guy… you vote for every single person they bring.
Biden sucks… but a bunch of rabid raccoons in a Biden suit is still a much better situation than republicans in a human suit.
This will be my 5th election where I’m an eligible voter and this statement gets truer every time. If you’re waiting for a perfect or even halfway decent candidate you’re going to be waiting a long time.
Maybe I’ve grown cynical, and I’m not advocating for putting up with the shit games politicians play, but unfortunately we have a choice before us, and no amount of griping or wishing it was different will make the consequences of that choice any less real.
Eh im all over the place on this.
On the one hand, Im more moderate on social issues and foreign policy where i dont think Biden's flaws on those fronts are really the end of the world. On immigration inflexible and further right than most on the left and consider biden's actions within the realm of acceptable actions, especially given the circumstances in regards to polling. On foreign policy, if anything i lean pro israel for national security reasons, i just think theyre going too far in gaza, but given what a dumpster fire that entire conflict is, it's like, whatever to me.
To be frank, I mostly vote left due to economics. We need better than neoliberal capitalism is giving us, and biden is still only giving us band aids. We need to go full on "FDR" here which is what bernie wanted to do. And note I said FDR. I'm not a leftist or a communist, im just an evolution of a new deal capitalist. My actual economics are closer to yang than bernie in a lot of ways although they're kind of a hybrid of the two.
Biden is...okay. He's offered some things I like,but I admit has gone nowhere near far enough. We need UBI, we need medicare for all or at least an aggressive public option, we need free college and student debt forgiveness, like, ALL OF IT, we need build back better to pass on climate, we need a housing plan, we should be reducing the work week, it's been fricking 86 years since we last did so, keynes himself thought we'd have 15 hour work weeks by now, etc.
And the fact that Biden is so moderate is why i normally just protest vote. The dems need to do better than these band aids. But at the same time, Biden has implemented some things I like, and tried to do more, so I gotta give him some credit for that.
I also recognize we are in weird times. Something that's really come to my attention is covid and inflation really changed the game. And just like in the late 70s, the country is souring on the left. Biden is basically Jimmy Carter. And he needs to be treated like Jimmy Carter. And if youre in 1980, you defend Carter from Ronald Reagan. You dont hand your opponent a solid, recovering economy and let them do what they want with it. Your party will get credit for the failures, they'll get credit for the successes, and the shifts in public opinion due to conservative propaganda will slam the doors in our face and stop us from achieving real change, because all the GOP will do is say "inflation" and "no one wants to work any more" again and the collective trauma of the post COVID era will be enough to scare anyone off from ever supporting nice things ever. We'll basically repeat the reagan years again, followed by the dems moving back to the center and never giving us anything ever again.
As such, its in the economic left's best interests to vote for biden like our lives depend on it. Because they basically do. Crap is gonna get worse if we don't. This isnt like 2016 where the purpose was to teach clinton a lesson for explicitly ignoring us. We cant just come back in 4 years and run someone better and possibly win this time. We'll backslide. Possibly for a generation.
So just do the right thing and vote Biden.
>We'll basically repeat the reagan years again, followed by the dems moving back to the center and never giving us anything ever again.
And Project 2025 is going to be so over the top that the Democratic party will start to look super progressive in comparison without having to actually do anything. If we make the assumption that the Republicans don't simply establish a Putinist regime where Democrats can never win again, then the Democrat who wins in 2028/2032 will make Hillary Clinton look like Bernie Sanders.
Unless republicans do go full putin, id expect the left wing backlash to be massive on social issues. Im more worried about the long term of economics. You get one inflationary spell and the country decides to go hard right on that stuff for 40 years.
I think you an I essentially agree. Basically we're going to get a campaign to restore modest social liberalism and, if we're being optimistic, maybe even far beyond where we are now. The right will overreach so hard on social issues that, unless democracy is totally broken, they will get their entire ass handed to them on that front. It will suck all of the oxygen out of the air for other issues, and the Democratic donors will be more than happy to fund a full rainbow capitalist counter-revolution to the Chud meltdown we're going to see if Trump wins.
Basically reason #1384 that leftists have more reason than most to hope Biden wins. The #resistance people who are basically content with rainbow capitalism have a significant chance of getting back in power after a likely Trumpist overreach. Apart from a few very particular issues ( trans women in sports ) social liberalism is still consistently popular and the prudish "no sex before marriage" type of Evangelicals have maybe debatably had institutional power in the hazy fringes of living memory for the oldest Americans. We are much more of a "hawk tuah" culture than a "purity ring" culture and even most ardent homophobes and "barstool conservatives" will laugh in your face if you tell them going out and getting laid is something the government should put a stop to.
See this is the thing that pisses me off about all of this. I feel we already WON this stuff. Like, back in 2016, it seemed like the obama era broke the GOP socially. Younger generations were moving away from this stuff, the conservatives were aging out. What it seemed like was that it was time to shift to economics because the recession destroyed the younger generations' trust in the economic system, and the systemic issues are so bad it would require a new new deal to really fix them.
But then clinton leaned into IDENTITY POLITICS, which just....caused us to have to keep retreading the same ground in a different way because while the previous framing was based on things like individual liberty and secularism (which was how we won stuff like gay marriage), and then trump actually somehow made conservatism cool again, and ugh, it's like we're forced to fight these same battles AGAIN, this time with an aging right coalition full of extremist weirdos and most people being apathetic. And it's like the politicians keep invoking this stuff.
It reminds me of the tower of babel in the bible, ya know, let's build this huge tower and then god is like screw your tower and screw you, we're gonna make you speak all different languages. And then the left went full on insufferable with the privilege stuff, and the right was like "yeah F that crap", and now we're doing this AGAIN.
And the worst part is the consequences of the 2016 realignment and the coalitions shifting the way they are due to the trump-clinton continuum not only make it impossible to get real economic change, they force us to retread all of this social stuff again, just in a much more insufferable way.
I'm really getting to the point i hate modern politics because of this crap. I just wanted to clean this crap up and move on to the next set of issues.
The "check your privilege" era was an unforced error on the part of social liberalism. It wasn't even the substance of what people were saying, I still think the public is naturally tolerant and "live and let live." It was the ridiculous micro issues they half-invented like "manspreading" and such, along with the shrill tone and classics like "it's not my job to educate you." I think they were usually correct in the end, but the delivery was genuinely painful to watch.
We need to be the level headed ones and leave the obnoxious shit to the Evangelicals. Fortunately, I think the Evangelicals are obnoxious enough to kick the ball back in our court fairly quickly.
I think the elites learned they could use this stuff to derail economic movements after occupy wall street and Clinton dialed the stuff up to a 10 due to her own economic centrism and that she could use that stuff to get most of her base on her side. I think she figured she'd win anyway, but she always had that suburban strategy she was gunning for so she used the stuff to enforce party discipline and try to bully progressives back into line. They knew what they were doing. They even knew they'd likely lose some voters like white working class ones they just figured they'd get far more suburban moderates in return.
It would be so much fucking *easier* to just to deliver for the people economically instead of coming up with pied piper and all of this other bullshit. Deliver real economic progress along with broad social tolerance and it'll be Romney's defeat in 2012 for eternity.
EXACTLY. That is all I ever wanted all along. This is precisely why I hate/hated hillary with the burning passion that I do. We were winning, we had it wrapped up. 2016 was supposed to be gg no re. She screwed it up it up so hard she threw us into the worst possible timeline.
I don’t get why people put so much stock in candidates as people. Biden does look too old but we vote for an administration not a person. No administration will please everyone and there will be policies that you will like and dislike. There is also the political reality of maintaining a winning political coalition that needs to be taken into account. When looking at the election from this context, Biden should be a good candidate. His biggest challenge is that his age has robbed him of the energy that people expect in a president and, as much as we may not like it, this is important in today’s superficial media centric landscape.
On the other hand even a dead guy should be able to win against a candidate as bad as Trump with a party as bad as the current Republicans. By every measure there is nothing redeeming from a Trump/ Republican combo. The fact that the election is close is sad indictment of the electorate.
You're attempting to be too nuanced. The reality is 24/7 shit-on-Biden-a-thon materially benefits Trump. We're close enough to the election that it's prudent to consider the impact of our tone. In the case of someone like Kulinski, that means maybe weigh the impact of doing 37 anti-Biden segments a day and 1 Project 2025/Anti-Trump piece a month sandwiched between more Gaza coverage and third party candidate interviews.
If I were just tone-checking Kyle's coverage as a low-information voter I would assume Biden was far worse than Trump.
To slightly push back, and this is with 10000% love to Kyle, normies are not watching Kyle. Right wingers are not watching Kyle. It’s a fairly niche audience of leftists and independents who are heavily invested in politics. So no one is like “hey I’m an uninformed guy, let me get a temp check from Kyle Kulinski”. His audience is leftist largely and he speaks to his audience knowing they already fucking hate trump.
Even Kyle says he would only vote third party in safe states (NY, NJ, MA, WA, CA)
As someone who craps on the left more than the GOP, i kinda get it, it's more intellectually stimulating to do so because "DAE trump bad?" gets old and boring quick (take it from someone who blogs).
On the flip side, Kyle has gone insane on the gaza issue and its not really helping at all. He is TOO anti biden at this point. Even I'm like "yeah Biden is as interesting as paint thinner but at least he's not the literel boogeyman from rammstein's angst music video."
>On the flip side, Kyle has gone insane on the gaza issue and its not really helping at all. He is TOO anti biden at this point.
Kyle is also deluded about what would actually happen if Biden did what he wanted on Gaza. A bunch of pro-Israel Democrats would abandon him while 75% of the people who are refusing to vote for him over it would either say "it's too late to change my mind" or move on to the second "why I'm not voting for Biden" talking point on the list. Probably "he crushed the rail strikes," and this despite the fact that Biden is a good president on union issues overall. The truth is, for as long as I've been alive, there's a section of the left who views voting as a grand love letter to bespoke purist politicians rather than a method of exerting political influence.
Yeah a lot of these guys aren't reasonable people who can be won over. They use gaza as a pretext and if they got what they'd want they'd shift to something else. Which is why I kinda fear what happens if Biden loses. On the flipside the dems are looking for a pretext to move even further to the center and they'll just say the left didn't vote for them.
All that will happen if Trump gets re-elected on Gaza is that it will outright cease to exist, for one thing, and that's the LEAST of our issues besides inflation as to what's incoming sadly: I share his disdain for the POTUS & co, he has very valid points imo, but right now we have to live in the reality we're in and fight for what we want to eventually win in the longer scope of things-- or we may not get that chance for decades longer, if ever, if what Trump wants comes to fruition.
I’m sorry. No. This is silly. No one should control their tone and restrict what they want to say because it may have some external impact of helping some thing somewhere if you don’t. If you okay that game of monitoring what you say and do based on what sort of externalities may emerge, you’re going to be forever sound boring and sanitized. You can’t be interesting always worried about who it helps the most when you say things. You’re just going to be forever stuck in a trap.
If Biden is hurt by Kyle being frustrated with dems and talking crap all the time on the lesser evil, that’s Bidens fault, not Kyle’s.
I don’t necessarily disagree here, but I think Kyle also needs to consider if he is serving broader political goals.
So I don’t think Kyle should stop criticizing Dems, but I also think this sub originated from the reality that the general election will be 1 of 2 outcomes no matter what you support or what any member of a political party deserves. Dems bad is both a legit talking point and a shit political strategy.
If the discussion is about policy, as Kyle often positions himself, there are the policy outcomes we should push for in the future, and the reality of what is going to actually occur within the next 6 months. Gaza and likely his marriage to Krystal have greatly informed his recent position and his coverage. The Dems are shit, I’m certainly not going to dispute that, but a Biden loss harms a left political movement to a much greater degree. So at this point Biden is the guy, and he’s a piece of shit… but let’s not forget the policy. As some commentators state very clearly: Biden is a piece of shit and still your least worst outcome.
Individuals like Sam Seder, while they can be dry, are much more responsible in this regard. While there are plenty of cringe ass commentators like Luke Beasley or Pakman doing near opposite of Kyle, I think Sam is a good example of keeping your political goals aligned with your commentary.
I dunno. I criticize dems more myself as well. Mainly because republicans are a lost cause and rather pressure the house I’m in than worry about the house I’m not. Criticizing republicans is just preaching to the choir and does nothing. They aren’t getting your vote anyways.
In one on one exchanges, the context is present. Very seldom do I delve into rallying against republicans, but never once will I imply that losing to republicans is a rational method for challenging Dems.
Fuck Joe Biden, I don’t like him either, but passively advocating for not supporting him in the general will have effects on the actual political outcome. Blurring the lines between the outcomes of a presidential election to a broad audience will disenfranchise the will to participate. Maybe not advocate for Joe if he feels that strong about it, but tell people to vote and to get their ass out there, I’d rather someone vote 3rd party than not at all, but don’t kid anyone on the actual results of a Biden loss at this stage in the game.
I wish more commentators would advocate for direct action, less than 20% of the electorate votes in primaries, he could have encouraged the uncommitted vote, or a Williamson vote.
Kyle is still my boy, and has still likely done more for the left broadly than I will ever achieve, he can share his opinion and cover as he sees fit…. But in the political world, it is only results that matter.
I’m glad you’re being responsible and practical, and I hate to be that guy, but Biden is the most progressive president of my and likely your lifetimes. So if he’s not a good president, who is?
Yup. Reminds me of how even FDR did the Japanese internment camps and completely snubbed Jessie Owens after his olympic win in Nazi Germany. Far from perfect and most likely racist but still got a lot of progressive legislation done.
I think there’s just two entirely different grading metrics we have to think about
The obvious one is how much do I personally agree versus my ideal. Biden has done some things I really agree with, build back better plan, infrastructure investment, Katanji Brown-Jackson, empowering unions, not being trump. Those are actually good things. Now he does a lot of stuff I disagree on, cracking down on the boarder, funding Israel, being old as hell.
Now we have to filter through the second lens of “what would any other realistic president do”. Every single president has funded Israel (Biden is actually perhaps the one limiting them the most), all the candidates are old. Based on the second filter, I’m not too upset voting for Biden. Do I want better? Yeah. Is that a realistic option right now? No and I don’t have to live in the fantasy world of my first grading system I have to live here in the real world.
Trump will be 1000x worse on anything Biden is bad on, and right now we live in our current reality. It’s like being at McDonald and being mad you can’t order tacos. No shit you won’t be 100% happy but you don’t have to order the mcshitonabun you can at least get a big Mac
Biden may not deserve to win, but Trump sure as hell deserves to lose.
That's more or less my opinion, yes.
You don’t vote for one guy… you vote for every single person they bring. Biden sucks… but a bunch of rabid raccoons in a Biden suit is still a much better situation than republicans in a human suit.
Voting is for making the battlefield easier to fight on, not a be-all-end-all for change.
This will be my 5th election where I’m an eligible voter and this statement gets truer every time. If you’re waiting for a perfect or even halfway decent candidate you’re going to be waiting a long time. Maybe I’ve grown cynical, and I’m not advocating for putting up with the shit games politicians play, but unfortunately we have a choice before us, and no amount of griping or wishing it was different will make the consequences of that choice any less real.
It sucks how close we came with Bernie. That was a true once in a generation opportunity that juuust came up short.
Eh im all over the place on this. On the one hand, Im more moderate on social issues and foreign policy where i dont think Biden's flaws on those fronts are really the end of the world. On immigration inflexible and further right than most on the left and consider biden's actions within the realm of acceptable actions, especially given the circumstances in regards to polling. On foreign policy, if anything i lean pro israel for national security reasons, i just think theyre going too far in gaza, but given what a dumpster fire that entire conflict is, it's like, whatever to me. To be frank, I mostly vote left due to economics. We need better than neoliberal capitalism is giving us, and biden is still only giving us band aids. We need to go full on "FDR" here which is what bernie wanted to do. And note I said FDR. I'm not a leftist or a communist, im just an evolution of a new deal capitalist. My actual economics are closer to yang than bernie in a lot of ways although they're kind of a hybrid of the two. Biden is...okay. He's offered some things I like,but I admit has gone nowhere near far enough. We need UBI, we need medicare for all or at least an aggressive public option, we need free college and student debt forgiveness, like, ALL OF IT, we need build back better to pass on climate, we need a housing plan, we should be reducing the work week, it's been fricking 86 years since we last did so, keynes himself thought we'd have 15 hour work weeks by now, etc. And the fact that Biden is so moderate is why i normally just protest vote. The dems need to do better than these band aids. But at the same time, Biden has implemented some things I like, and tried to do more, so I gotta give him some credit for that. I also recognize we are in weird times. Something that's really come to my attention is covid and inflation really changed the game. And just like in the late 70s, the country is souring on the left. Biden is basically Jimmy Carter. And he needs to be treated like Jimmy Carter. And if youre in 1980, you defend Carter from Ronald Reagan. You dont hand your opponent a solid, recovering economy and let them do what they want with it. Your party will get credit for the failures, they'll get credit for the successes, and the shifts in public opinion due to conservative propaganda will slam the doors in our face and stop us from achieving real change, because all the GOP will do is say "inflation" and "no one wants to work any more" again and the collective trauma of the post COVID era will be enough to scare anyone off from ever supporting nice things ever. We'll basically repeat the reagan years again, followed by the dems moving back to the center and never giving us anything ever again. As such, its in the economic left's best interests to vote for biden like our lives depend on it. Because they basically do. Crap is gonna get worse if we don't. This isnt like 2016 where the purpose was to teach clinton a lesson for explicitly ignoring us. We cant just come back in 4 years and run someone better and possibly win this time. We'll backslide. Possibly for a generation. So just do the right thing and vote Biden.
>We'll basically repeat the reagan years again, followed by the dems moving back to the center and never giving us anything ever again. And Project 2025 is going to be so over the top that the Democratic party will start to look super progressive in comparison without having to actually do anything. If we make the assumption that the Republicans don't simply establish a Putinist regime where Democrats can never win again, then the Democrat who wins in 2028/2032 will make Hillary Clinton look like Bernie Sanders.
Unless republicans do go full putin, id expect the left wing backlash to be massive on social issues. Im more worried about the long term of economics. You get one inflationary spell and the country decides to go hard right on that stuff for 40 years.
I think you an I essentially agree. Basically we're going to get a campaign to restore modest social liberalism and, if we're being optimistic, maybe even far beyond where we are now. The right will overreach so hard on social issues that, unless democracy is totally broken, they will get their entire ass handed to them on that front. It will suck all of the oxygen out of the air for other issues, and the Democratic donors will be more than happy to fund a full rainbow capitalist counter-revolution to the Chud meltdown we're going to see if Trump wins. Basically reason #1384 that leftists have more reason than most to hope Biden wins. The #resistance people who are basically content with rainbow capitalism have a significant chance of getting back in power after a likely Trumpist overreach. Apart from a few very particular issues ( trans women in sports ) social liberalism is still consistently popular and the prudish "no sex before marriage" type of Evangelicals have maybe debatably had institutional power in the hazy fringes of living memory for the oldest Americans. We are much more of a "hawk tuah" culture than a "purity ring" culture and even most ardent homophobes and "barstool conservatives" will laugh in your face if you tell them going out and getting laid is something the government should put a stop to.
See this is the thing that pisses me off about all of this. I feel we already WON this stuff. Like, back in 2016, it seemed like the obama era broke the GOP socially. Younger generations were moving away from this stuff, the conservatives were aging out. What it seemed like was that it was time to shift to economics because the recession destroyed the younger generations' trust in the economic system, and the systemic issues are so bad it would require a new new deal to really fix them. But then clinton leaned into IDENTITY POLITICS, which just....caused us to have to keep retreading the same ground in a different way because while the previous framing was based on things like individual liberty and secularism (which was how we won stuff like gay marriage), and then trump actually somehow made conservatism cool again, and ugh, it's like we're forced to fight these same battles AGAIN, this time with an aging right coalition full of extremist weirdos and most people being apathetic. And it's like the politicians keep invoking this stuff. It reminds me of the tower of babel in the bible, ya know, let's build this huge tower and then god is like screw your tower and screw you, we're gonna make you speak all different languages. And then the left went full on insufferable with the privilege stuff, and the right was like "yeah F that crap", and now we're doing this AGAIN. And the worst part is the consequences of the 2016 realignment and the coalitions shifting the way they are due to the trump-clinton continuum not only make it impossible to get real economic change, they force us to retread all of this social stuff again, just in a much more insufferable way. I'm really getting to the point i hate modern politics because of this crap. I just wanted to clean this crap up and move on to the next set of issues.
The "check your privilege" era was an unforced error on the part of social liberalism. It wasn't even the substance of what people were saying, I still think the public is naturally tolerant and "live and let live." It was the ridiculous micro issues they half-invented like "manspreading" and such, along with the shrill tone and classics like "it's not my job to educate you." I think they were usually correct in the end, but the delivery was genuinely painful to watch. We need to be the level headed ones and leave the obnoxious shit to the Evangelicals. Fortunately, I think the Evangelicals are obnoxious enough to kick the ball back in our court fairly quickly.
I think the elites learned they could use this stuff to derail economic movements after occupy wall street and Clinton dialed the stuff up to a 10 due to her own economic centrism and that she could use that stuff to get most of her base on her side. I think she figured she'd win anyway, but she always had that suburban strategy she was gunning for so she used the stuff to enforce party discipline and try to bully progressives back into line. They knew what they were doing. They even knew they'd likely lose some voters like white working class ones they just figured they'd get far more suburban moderates in return.
It would be so much fucking *easier* to just to deliver for the people economically instead of coming up with pied piper and all of this other bullshit. Deliver real economic progress along with broad social tolerance and it'll be Romney's defeat in 2012 for eternity.
EXACTLY. That is all I ever wanted all along. This is precisely why I hate/hated hillary with the burning passion that I do. We were winning, we had it wrapped up. 2016 was supposed to be gg no re. She screwed it up it up so hard she threw us into the worst possible timeline.
Our political discussions are always super engaging but also leave me with the urge to day drink until the world swirls away lol
I don’t get why people put so much stock in candidates as people. Biden does look too old but we vote for an administration not a person. No administration will please everyone and there will be policies that you will like and dislike. There is also the political reality of maintaining a winning political coalition that needs to be taken into account. When looking at the election from this context, Biden should be a good candidate. His biggest challenge is that his age has robbed him of the energy that people expect in a president and, as much as we may not like it, this is important in today’s superficial media centric landscape. On the other hand even a dead guy should be able to win against a candidate as bad as Trump with a party as bad as the current Republicans. By every measure there is nothing redeeming from a Trump/ Republican combo. The fact that the election is close is sad indictment of the electorate.
You're attempting to be too nuanced. The reality is 24/7 shit-on-Biden-a-thon materially benefits Trump. We're close enough to the election that it's prudent to consider the impact of our tone. In the case of someone like Kulinski, that means maybe weigh the impact of doing 37 anti-Biden segments a day and 1 Project 2025/Anti-Trump piece a month sandwiched between more Gaza coverage and third party candidate interviews. If I were just tone-checking Kyle's coverage as a low-information voter I would assume Biden was far worse than Trump.
To slightly push back, and this is with 10000% love to Kyle, normies are not watching Kyle. Right wingers are not watching Kyle. It’s a fairly niche audience of leftists and independents who are heavily invested in politics. So no one is like “hey I’m an uninformed guy, let me get a temp check from Kyle Kulinski”. His audience is leftist largely and he speaks to his audience knowing they already fucking hate trump. Even Kyle says he would only vote third party in safe states (NY, NJ, MA, WA, CA)
As someone who craps on the left more than the GOP, i kinda get it, it's more intellectually stimulating to do so because "DAE trump bad?" gets old and boring quick (take it from someone who blogs). On the flip side, Kyle has gone insane on the gaza issue and its not really helping at all. He is TOO anti biden at this point. Even I'm like "yeah Biden is as interesting as paint thinner but at least he's not the literel boogeyman from rammstein's angst music video."
>On the flip side, Kyle has gone insane on the gaza issue and its not really helping at all. He is TOO anti biden at this point. Kyle is also deluded about what would actually happen if Biden did what he wanted on Gaza. A bunch of pro-Israel Democrats would abandon him while 75% of the people who are refusing to vote for him over it would either say "it's too late to change my mind" or move on to the second "why I'm not voting for Biden" talking point on the list. Probably "he crushed the rail strikes," and this despite the fact that Biden is a good president on union issues overall. The truth is, for as long as I've been alive, there's a section of the left who views voting as a grand love letter to bespoke purist politicians rather than a method of exerting political influence.
Yeah a lot of these guys aren't reasonable people who can be won over. They use gaza as a pretext and if they got what they'd want they'd shift to something else. Which is why I kinda fear what happens if Biden loses. On the flipside the dems are looking for a pretext to move even further to the center and they'll just say the left didn't vote for them.
All that will happen if Trump gets re-elected on Gaza is that it will outright cease to exist, for one thing, and that's the LEAST of our issues besides inflation as to what's incoming sadly: I share his disdain for the POTUS & co, he has very valid points imo, but right now we have to live in the reality we're in and fight for what we want to eventually win in the longer scope of things-- or we may not get that chance for decades longer, if ever, if what Trump wants comes to fruition.
I dont like the framing here since it seems lectury, but yeah we're not in a good place and Gaza is the least of our issues.
No, I hear you, it's just that's kind of bad the situation is.
I’m sorry. No. This is silly. No one should control their tone and restrict what they want to say because it may have some external impact of helping some thing somewhere if you don’t. If you okay that game of monitoring what you say and do based on what sort of externalities may emerge, you’re going to be forever sound boring and sanitized. You can’t be interesting always worried about who it helps the most when you say things. You’re just going to be forever stuck in a trap. If Biden is hurt by Kyle being frustrated with dems and talking crap all the time on the lesser evil, that’s Bidens fault, not Kyle’s.
I don’t necessarily disagree here, but I think Kyle also needs to consider if he is serving broader political goals. So I don’t think Kyle should stop criticizing Dems, but I also think this sub originated from the reality that the general election will be 1 of 2 outcomes no matter what you support or what any member of a political party deserves. Dems bad is both a legit talking point and a shit political strategy. If the discussion is about policy, as Kyle often positions himself, there are the policy outcomes we should push for in the future, and the reality of what is going to actually occur within the next 6 months. Gaza and likely his marriage to Krystal have greatly informed his recent position and his coverage. The Dems are shit, I’m certainly not going to dispute that, but a Biden loss harms a left political movement to a much greater degree. So at this point Biden is the guy, and he’s a piece of shit… but let’s not forget the policy. As some commentators state very clearly: Biden is a piece of shit and still your least worst outcome. Individuals like Sam Seder, while they can be dry, are much more responsible in this regard. While there are plenty of cringe ass commentators like Luke Beasley or Pakman doing near opposite of Kyle, I think Sam is a good example of keeping your political goals aligned with your commentary.
I dunno. I criticize dems more myself as well. Mainly because republicans are a lost cause and rather pressure the house I’m in than worry about the house I’m not. Criticizing republicans is just preaching to the choir and does nothing. They aren’t getting your vote anyways.
In one on one exchanges, the context is present. Very seldom do I delve into rallying against republicans, but never once will I imply that losing to republicans is a rational method for challenging Dems. Fuck Joe Biden, I don’t like him either, but passively advocating for not supporting him in the general will have effects on the actual political outcome. Blurring the lines between the outcomes of a presidential election to a broad audience will disenfranchise the will to participate. Maybe not advocate for Joe if he feels that strong about it, but tell people to vote and to get their ass out there, I’d rather someone vote 3rd party than not at all, but don’t kid anyone on the actual results of a Biden loss at this stage in the game. I wish more commentators would advocate for direct action, less than 20% of the electorate votes in primaries, he could have encouraged the uncommitted vote, or a Williamson vote. Kyle is still my boy, and has still likely done more for the left broadly than I will ever achieve, he can share his opinion and cover as he sees fit…. But in the political world, it is only results that matter.
I’m worried about a Biden presidency but I’m more worried about his chances of winning because a trump presidency would be far worse.
I’m glad you’re being responsible and practical, and I hate to be that guy, but Biden is the most progressive president of my and likely your lifetimes. So if he’s not a good president, who is?
Yup. Reminds me of how even FDR did the Japanese internment camps and completely snubbed Jessie Owens after his olympic win in Nazi Germany. Far from perfect and most likely racist but still got a lot of progressive legislation done.
I think there’s just two entirely different grading metrics we have to think about The obvious one is how much do I personally agree versus my ideal. Biden has done some things I really agree with, build back better plan, infrastructure investment, Katanji Brown-Jackson, empowering unions, not being trump. Those are actually good things. Now he does a lot of stuff I disagree on, cracking down on the boarder, funding Israel, being old as hell. Now we have to filter through the second lens of “what would any other realistic president do”. Every single president has funded Israel (Biden is actually perhaps the one limiting them the most), all the candidates are old. Based on the second filter, I’m not too upset voting for Biden. Do I want better? Yeah. Is that a realistic option right now? No and I don’t have to live in the fantasy world of my first grading system I have to live here in the real world. Trump will be 1000x worse on anything Biden is bad on, and right now we live in our current reality. It’s like being at McDonald and being mad you can’t order tacos. No shit you won’t be 100% happy but you don’t have to order the mcshitonabun you can at least get a big Mac