US Presidential Election 2020

Water John wrote: »

Don't have that slant on CNN, in fairness. Their figures on an entrance poll in Nevada shows Sanders is also taking a good share of the moderates and many union members despite their leaders advocating against Sanders.

Which is quite understandable because Medicare For All is far better for them than any health insurance plan that can be negotiated for them by a union.

And that's as good as it gets in terms of health insurance.

DreamsBurnDown wrote: »

You exact quote was "self proclaimed centrists will generally side with a fascist against mild social democracy".

This is absurd nonsense, let alone being highly offensive. I am a self proclaimed centrist and believe in mild social democracy. Literally most Democrats I know in the US would say the same. I may disagree with some of Bernie's proposals, especially on health care, but I would still vote for him in the national election.

Who are these Democrats that side with fascists? If you are suggesting Democrats would vote for Trump rather than Bernie, you are simply incorrect.

Well, MSNBC, the so called "liberal network" is now openly saying the same thing as myself. You may be offended but reality doesn't care about your offence.

https://twitter.com/People4Bernie/status/1231310971546693632?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1231310971546693632&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fs9e.github.io%2Fiframe%2F2%2Ftwitter.min.html%231231310971546693632

DreamsBurnDown wrote: »

So, because you believe one TV pundit (who I happen to think has long ago lost his marbles) agrees with you, you now believe your position to be correct?

My reality is based on living in the US and listening to a wide spectrum of views, not just those that agree with me. In my experience the #1 priority of Democrats and certainly all the Democrats I know is defeating Trump. Conspiracy theories based on one out of touch TV pundit don't influence my thinking.

You said no "centrist" Democrats would even consider supporting Trump rather than Sanders. You said even the notion was "offensive".

I showed you the TV network most associated with the Democratic party openly touting that they would.

Yet you now call this a "conspiracy theory", despite me giving an obvious and real example of the exact thing I was talking about, happening live on US television.

In your last few posts, you've used "conspiracy theory", "tinfoil hat", "absurd nonsense", "loons" etc. against people who you disagree with who are making entirely reasonable points. These responses are not arguments. They're terms used to shut down arguments with empty rhetoric with more than a hint of aggression in them.

It doesn't show much of a willingness to debate, only to shout down those you disagree with.

DreamsBurnDown wrote: »

No I said you referring to centrist Democrats as siding with fascists was offensive, which it is, and frankly I have never heard such a ludicrous statement here in the US from any Democratic supporter. I'm sure one would see it on Twitter, but you can find any kind of extremist views in that cesspool.

There are obviously differences of opinion within the Democratic party and Democratic voters on policies, but favoring Trump over any Democratic candidate isn't one of them. The idea that centrist Democrats would prefer Trump to win rather than Sanders is a conspiracy theory. One pundit on TV noted for some pretty whacky statements while thinking aloud is a pretty weak argument to back up your claim that centrist Democrats side with fascism.

It was pure baseless speculation on his part not based on reality. I'll take it seriously if I start to hear it from other pundits, I suspect we won't.

If what you say is true, and centrist Democrats favor Trump over Sanders, then we Democrats shouldn't choose Sanders as clearly he would lose. If centrist Democrats were to favor Trump, Independents would even more strongly favor him and he would win in a landslide.

Trump fulfils all the key criteria of a fascist. And here we are with corporate Democrats openly touting for him.

It's not my fault if you refuse to see the wood for the trees and refuse to see what's literally in front of your eyes.

But it does preclude debating with you becaues you're obviously 100% certain you're right, despite the facts proving otherwise.

Presuming Bernie Sanders becomes the nominee - and apparently no candidate has ever before won competitive popular votes in all of Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada - I think he should make a big play of being the ideological heir to FDR.

The fashion now in the US seems to be to look to the past in order to look to the future - I don't like that but it's where the ground seems to be. But the past that Trump looked to was dark, dystopian, divisive and exclusionary.

FDR along with Lincoln is the most unimpeachable president in US history, universally revered. A Democrat, a moderniser, in US terms almost a revolutionary, and, most useful when taking on Trump and a military-obsessed Republican party, a war hero, the man who won "the good war" for America (and is pretty much untainted by the atomic bomb because he died before it was used).

One of the reasons Sinn Fein can make left populism thrive here is that there is no question aboout their nationalism. In Britain, one of Corbyn's main failings with the electorate was that he was anti-empire and therefore, farcically, seen as anti-English or anti-British by a public who have had the supposed virtue of empire force fed to them their whole lives.

Given that the Trump and the Republicans (who openly encourage Russian interference and ruthlessly purge anybody who speaks up about it) will likely try and pull one of their typical bait and switch projection moves to try and portray Sanders as a Russian asset, an association with a figure who is all-American, unimpeachably American, who walked the walk for America and for freedom, might be an effective counter to that and indeed provide avenues to attack Trump.

So if Sanders references and invokes FDR regularly and portrays himself as the modern FDR, he steals some the exact ground that Trump created for himself last time, but in a much more positive, all-American way - there's your slogan - Bernie Sanders - the all-American president.

briany wrote: »

I follow your logic, a kind of 'aim for the stars and you'll hit the moon' type of thing, but American politics is so partisan that it follows the theory of 'any action must have an equal, opposite reaction'.

Both sides are at it. While Trump and his cronies are still crazier, things like Nancy Pelosi ripping up Trump's speech behind him have firmly dragged the Dems into an arena of pettiness that only exacerbates this vicious cycle of paranoia and recrimination.

If America wants progressive policies, the best thing they can do is vote in progressive representatives and not rely too much on the POTUS to sidestep the whole legislative procedure with executive orders.

I'm not sure how much worse the "Republican reaction" can get or if it's even possible for it to get worse, they've veered so far towards craziness.

Bipartisanship in US politics is dead and has been dead for a long time and that's down to the Republican party and the Republican party alone. That was the inevitable upshot of the Southern Strategy in which they explicitly embraced racism as a strategy. What we have been seeing for decades from the Republicans and their associated media is a desperate bid to sustain white power in US society in the face of the US becoming a majority minority country. They became organised and ruthless at every level while the Democrats completely took their eye off the ball.

The Republicans decided to go to war with Democrats and they will not stop. To win a war you have to destroy your opponents and the Republicans depend on destroying the ethnic minority poor, breaking their spirit, stacking the courts with right wing crazies, making inequality so great that there is no hope.

The Democrats can't win a war by playing nice and attempting to compromise. There is no compromise possible. You have to declare war back, be ruthless and get organised at every level. We've really only seen signs of this since Trump came to power but realistically the project facing the Democratic party is a minimum two decades long one. You need to win state houses, state senates, governorships, literally everything you can get your hands on. That's the only way you can change the country.

Demographics in the medium to longer term are on the Democrats' side, but you can't just wait for power, you have to be organised and ruthless at every level like the Republicans have been.