Someday, somebody needs to write a doctoral dissertation on how and why so many on the Bernie Sanders campaign team ended up on the far right of American politics, and so many on the Mitt Romney team ended up on the center left.
— David Frum (@davidfrum) September 10, 2023
Simple as: Some ‘political’ people are interested in getting their priorities into law; some are authoritarians who just want to force voters to act as they ‘should’…
Rubber is hitting the road with Biden admin and blue states getting wins and we’re now figuring out who actually cares about moving the ball forward vs who is crypto fash or willing to make a career on taking their money https://t.co/F8Ub7XmSE2
— Giacomo Volpe ?????? (@_jack_fox_) September 10, 2023
More and more people are finding themselves on the road to Brandon Thought https://t.co/0CJmyWaeL1
— Sviatoslav Richter Scale (@ilpomodoro2) September 9, 2023
“Biden can be ten times better than Trump, let’s concede that for the sake of argument, I’m not voting for him.” ??????? https://t.co/E8PZYKB7VS
— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) September 9, 2023
Briahna Joy Gray can’t afford to stop telling people to vote against Democrats!
A reminder of who really bankrolls the anti-democratic fckery of Gums and Roses https://t.co/A7ygPui9si
— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha) September 10, 2023
I'm just pleased as punch to see the Cosplay Socialists wounding each other.
— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha) September 10, 2023
Another ‘prominent Leftist commentor’ with too much invested in his priors:
Cenk is out here strongly pushing for the John Bel Edwards-Henry Cuellar Democrats for Life national ticket https://t.co/VEVf9vY4tB
— AquaImperium (@aquaimperium8) September 10, 2023
People can learn — as long as all their (emotional as well as political) capital isn’t invested in not learning…
Dangerman
Sorry to threadjack so early, but how the hell did the Giants get bageled by 40 and why is their head coach still employed?
Baud
Sounds like the name of a hard rock cover band at The Villages.
Central Planning
I’m thankful I don’t know who any of those people are in the videos.
Betty Cracker
The only thing I have to say about this is: welcome to the lifeboat, Krystal and Kyle!
Shalimar
@Dangerman: Hard to find a list, but it appears to be one of the 10 worst shutouts at home in NFL history. So they have that going for them.
p.a.
One facet of the intertubes- idiots have a platform to reach millions (contrasted to the days of “ach! Another letter-to-the-editor from that guy”), and then have an psychological/emotional need to defend their idiocy.
Who knew US democracy might depend on people’s ability to say, “yep, I fucked up.”!
Michael Bersin
I’m not surprised now, witnessed this long ago:
Your $27.00 won’t get you into heaven anymore (June 19, 2016)
The comments are extra-special.
Dangerman
@Shalimar: I’m looking for a line where they go 0-17. I don’t see a lot of wins on their schedule.
raven
Krystal is still a dildo!
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Doesn’t it, though? I LOL’d.
@Central Planning:
I’m right with you there.
Baud
Worrying about the MAGA Left is as fruitless as worrying about MAGA. They’re going to do what they’re going to do.
BruceFromOhio
Faux News already has the “Dems suck” beat covered.
satby
The dissertation Frum is looking for was written by Eric Hoffer in 1951, updated repeatedly by many other writers since in numerous books on authoritarians and the horseshoe theory.
Baud
@BruceFromOhio:
Same message, different demo. There’s no such thing as one size fits all marketing. The financiers understand the need for diversity.
satby
@Baud: god knows a millennial wouldn’t be caught dead watching Fox news, too busy watching Rogan on YouTube.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Not that I can do anything about that either, but I’m more worried about Manchin or some other centrist Dem deciding to head up the No
PoliciesLabels ticket than I am about the noisy but not very numerous anti-Dem left.BruceFromOhio
@Baud: Of course I’d vote for a woman president, just not that one.
@Michael Bersin:
Cats in a handbag, you ain’t kidding.
satby
Deleted
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
There’s no labels, but there’s also Cornel West. They have both sides covered.
Baud
@satby:
I get a sign in screen.
satby
@lowtechcyclist: And nobody outside of WV except political geeks who already hate him even know who Joe Manichin is.
satby
@Baud: ok, I’ll delete it. Thanks.
eversor
@satby:
Someone should tell Joe Manchin that.
Baud
I’ll note this. The admission that Biden is better than Trump is a change in tactics, suggesting that the old message that both sides are the same isn’t resonating like it used to.
Balconesfault
@lowtechcyclist: The no labels candidate could pull voters from Dems and Republicans.
The anti Dem left will be working to minimize participation by young voters, who are increasingly more important to Dem successes than potential “No Labelers”.
Those convincing younger voters “if you can’t have it all then stay home and show them” are much more pernicious.
BruceFromOhio
@Baud: Anecdotally, I’ve encountered more folks realizing the “Anthrax and Tire Rims” theorem.
@Balconesfault: Return of the Purity Ponies!
Kay
Dumb political commentary. Equivalent to reading You Tube comments. I can’t believe people get paid for this. It’s gotten dumber too – when they attacked Gore or Obama they at least made a pretense of caring about policy. Now they don’t even know what Biden has done or not done.
She had no comeback to the list of accomplishments in Minnesota because she wasn’t aware of any of them – remember – this is her full time job. She has nothing.
Ask one of them to list Biden’s favorable NLRB decisions or how the changes in student loans benefit debtors – they couldn’t do it.
Tony Jay
My two pennies worth, from over here.
Because it’s not ‘Democrats’ and it’s not ‘Democratic angst’. It’s billionaire money being weaponised to create wedges in the small-d democratic system in order to prevent actual progressive policies from moving forward and to promote an authoritarian alternative that they control.
In the US, it’s a complete waste of time trying to split the Democratic coalition from the Right. It’s not 1990 anymore, the Republicans have already long ago harvested all but an infinitesimal nubbin of the old Democratic Party’s furthest Right electorate, plus the Parties are so far apart on just a general appreciation of what ‘reality’ looks like that anyone who can be convinced to vote GOP was probably always going to vote GOP anyway, and visa versa. Within the Party itself, other than the sui generis examples of Manchin and Sinema, there are no elected officials talking about reaching out across the aisle and compromising with the MAGAPs. Those days are dead and gone and buried out in the back yard next to Old Yeller and that nosy neighbour no one liked.
So, to actually drag votes away from the Democrats in numbers that matter, the smart strategy is to hack away at it from the Left. Just buy up or simply create platforms with trendy sounding monikers who can have a fine old time sipping champagne while denouncing the Democrats for ‘betraying real Left wing voters’ on whatever issue happens to be in the news at the moment. It’s such easy work, since saying “We should do good things, now!” is a shit-ton more attractive to decent people (the type who would vote for Democrats) than the logic-free hategarble you have to use to stir up Wingnuts.
A lot of younger and more left-wing voters will be looking around at the shambles decades of centre-right orthodoxy has made of everything and feeling genuine fear/anger, so putting a metaphorical arm around their shoulder and telling them “Yeah, you’re totally right, we could have all these great things right the fuck now, but those old farts running the Democratic Party won’t do the right thing unless you and me shame and threaten them into it. And if they don’t do what we want straight away, we don’t vote for them!” is pretty much Grooming 101.
You can tell how genuinely successful the Biden Administration has been in forcing through actual progressive policy by measuring the pitch at which these For-Rent Socialists whine about betrayal and the need to withhold votes. The higher the better, and right now they have to be broadcasting at a pitch so stratospheric they’re frying circuitry on the ISS.
It’s also worth pointing out that what works in one country won’t work in another. When the Money wanted to splinter the UK Labour Party and prevent a more progressive Government coming to power, they put all of their efforts into making the UKLP unelectable to voters in the centre, working with renegade MPs, the Media and foreign-linked lobby groups to foster an emotional revulsion to voting for Labour within the guts of centrist/centre-left voters so that they just stayed home or voted Lib Dem/Green/Independent. Now that the Hard Right is back in control of the Party you can see the narrative shifting towards “Don’t vote Labour, they’re no better than the Tories“. The difference on this go around is that they don’t have to lie to make that case, they just have to point towards what Labour are actually proposing and let 1 + 1= 2 do its work.
How do you deal with bogus Lefties fostering cynicism and exploiting genuine anger to please their sugardaddies? Exposure. It’s the only thing that’ll work long term. Make the case that they’re bankrolled by the same people who funded the Cthonic-Right takeover of the Republican Party and hammer the fuckers with it.
Baud
@Kay:
I bet one day we’ll learn they’re all being funded by Harlan Crow.
Old Dan and Little Ann
Every thing Briahna Joy Gray tweets out is so obnoxious. She brags about not voting for Biden at least twice a day. She refuses to admit voting 3rd party will help the orange menace. Sadly, she never acknowledges my hilarious and snarky replies!?
Freemark
Just how fucked up are politics when Joe Walsh is the voice of reason and responsibility?!
eversor
@Balconesfault:
I don’t think they are convicing anyone though.
I’m young and those would vote Democratic but don’t do not need any encouraging in this aspect. They have a clear set of goals that are not negotiable. Massive tax increases with none of this “it only starts at 400k” nonsense. UHC and UBI. Free tutition to state colleges. Housing price controls. Climate change. That’s what they care about. The MAGA left isn’t convincing them not to vote the Democratic party as most liberals tell them they can’t have it so they don’t vote.
Idiots like Cenk only have oxygen because they actively con people into thinking they matter in influencing people. They don’t. The only people who give a flying fuck what they think or know about them are political liberals who are worried about them driving away turnout from people who were never going to vote for them anyways because the same liberals told them what they want is off the table.
This system works out great for the Cenks and liberals of the world. Cenk gets to make bank, be important, and think he matters. The center left gets to believe the turnout issue is the fault of socialists rather than their refusal to actually address the issues that matter to the youngs.
If someone cares about those issues, their votes are already off the table because outside of The Squad everyone tells them they are off the table and how 250k income isn’t high enough to get hit with a massive tax hike and that UHC won’t happen. The vote was lost then. Not because some idiotic like Cenk said not to vote.
Baud
@eversor:
Not just the socialists. Also voter suppression. And other things.
The notion that XYZ doesn’t have any influence, and the only thing that matter in political outcomes is whether Democratic are good enough, strikes me as naive and simplistic.
ETA: I agree about not overestimating their influence.
Matt McIrvin
The reason Walsh understands this is that Republicans temperamentally care less about policy or even democracy than about doing anything to make sure their guy wins. This makes them bad people. It also leads to the correct choice in this instance.
One of the reasons I fret about the horseshoe/burn-the-world left so much is that I’ve had a feeling for decades that radical leftists are better people than I am. Their moral principles are less compromised. They’re seemingly willing to sacrifice everything and lose forever in the service of a grand abstract principle, or a vision of a fairer world.
On some level I am still doing mental penance for temporarily supporting the invasion of Iraq in 2002-2003. They didn’t, I did. They were right; I was wrong. Half a million people died because of that, and I still feel that I am personally guilty of half a million counts of murder for supporting it. I made an explicit commitment to pay attention to what they had to say forever and extend them some benefit of the doubt forever as a result of that. And every time I criticize them, there’s a voice in my head raising that doubt about what I’m saying because of what happened 20 years ago. (But this is the exact angle that “Bob in Portland” took to push his Putinist conspiracy theories about Crimea!)
I still find it hard to fathom that some of the same people who made the right call then insisted with all their hearts that Hillary Clinton was the greater menace than Donald Trump in 2016.
Some of them are really fascist moles or useful idiots for Russia, some are attention-starved annoyances, and in many cases, what they’re willing to sacrifice is the well-being and survival of millions of people.
different-church-lady
People with “platforms” are going to kill this country.
different-church-lady
@eversor:
Ah. So they don’t understand democracy. Got it.
satby
@Balconesfault: Somehow, I’m not too worried about the TikTok generation. Warning: NSFW
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I didn’t support the Iraq invasion, and I’m a mainline Democrat. So saying their opposition gives them moral authority over people like me is flat wrong.
ETA: Opposing the Iraq War doesn’t excuse people from other questionable decisions they make.
Anne Laurie
I doubt any of them — not even Gray! — are significant enough to get Harlan Crow’s attention. Certainly some (much) of her funding comes from right-wing billionaires — check out JChoe’s thread from last year. But Thiel / Sacks don’t have Crow’s top-down focus; from what we know at the moment, they dump smaller individual amounts on many, many potential ‘new media’ ratf*ckers, hoping to achieve with volume what they can’t with access.
And for sure, some of her funding came from a certain Russian oligarch… who has probably cut her off now, since he needs every penny to prop up his failing ’empire.’
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
You’re like an oligarch whisperer.
Michael Bersin
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
I’ve witnessed this far too many times, over way too many election cycles. A young(er) candidate with a lot of young(er) friends files in the primary. The make a lot of mistakes (“Pour everything into bumper stickers!”), waste a lot of effort (“Yard signs in every empty lot!”), but the energy of their commitment carries them a respectable distance. They lose the primary. They sit on their hands. The nominee then loses the election to the well-funded republican incumbent in an r+30 district. It’s overwhelming odds, that’s the way it is.
The people who always show up to do the hard work every cycle are again dispirited, are exhausted, and just left the keys on the counter unattended. The bright eyed, hyper energetic young(er) people who made a splash in the primary have long since disappeared into the ether, never to be seen again. They could have grabbed the keys and taken over the place. The old timers would have responded, “Bless you. Knock yourselves out. We’re so damn tired…”
Tony Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
No weapon crafted
Turned upon its maker
Refuses to fire
Guilt is educational, but it’s no teacher. A lot of people were right about Iraq, but if they’re also saying “Don’t vote, the Dems are just the GOP with different lapel pins” then it’s safe to say they’ve used up all of that credit.
Cameron
I’m an unforgiving sort with a long memory, so I find it hard to pay attention to anything David Frum has to say.
Michael Bersin
@Baud:
Bingo! I was in the freakin’ streets. Being right once doesn’t confer sainthood. I’ve always been right and I ain’t no saint.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
The way I heard it, you only opposed invading Iraq because you were trying to whip up a firestorm of anti-Belgian rage as part of your campaign against six-term incumbent Thibaut Mertens for Baudelaire County Dog and Racoon Catcher and thought a Middle-Eastern conflict might be an unwelcome distraction.
To be fair, you were right about that.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
Fuck the Flemish!
Geminid
Mr. Uygur is just trolling Democrats when he proposes Henry Cuellar as Joe Manchin’s running mate, on a “Pro-Life” ticket. He knows that Cuellar’s presence the House is a sore point with many Democrats.
I’m not sure Cuellar would be such a strong “Pro-Life” candidate nowadays. Last year, the Susan B. Anthony fund gave Cuellar a zero rating. That might have been because they thought a Republican could beat him, though.
Baud
@Michael Bersin:
Oooh. Nominated.
Michael Bersin
@Baud:
To be fair, they were referring to phlegm.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
That’s the spirit. Only a Walloon lets a good grudge go.
Princess
@Baud: and vice versa, Frum supported the war and needs to do penance for that forever, but he’s still right now and he left the GOP before Trump, for policy reasons.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
This. I was loudly against the Iraq War 21 years ago. It seemed obvious to me then that the invasion was a terrible idea: no, Iraq didn’t have nukes; and good luck keeping Iraq from degenerating into chaos after we ‘won’ by beating the Iraqi army.
So I don’t feel I deserve any brownie points for being right about what should have been fucking obvious to anyone paying attention at the time. And the corollary is that neither does anyone else who saw that too.
Besides, all that was over 20 years ago. The world changes, you’re faced with different problems and choices; how have you done with the choices that are more like the ones we’re facing now? And the record of the purity-pony left is sufficiently appalling over the past eight years that it’s easy to see why their influence is shrinking, thank goodness. So fuck’em.
Salty Sam .
I agree. And yet, I have two millennial sons who, although smart enough to know that sitting out a vote is the wrong approach, believe deeply in their hearts that everything eversor says above is correct. There are others in that cohort that DO believe that sitting out the election is the only ethical right thing to do. In other words, idiots.
For that matter, those things are important to me, but I’m old enough to know that we rarely get that pony for Christmas. Incrementalism, baby.
Baud
@Salty Sam .:
That’s a shame, but like I said, propaganda has influence.
And we don’t do ourselves any favors that only thr MAGA are susceptible to it.
Brachiator
@Baud:
As with the 2020 election, the vast majority of these people will probably vote for the Democrats.
But yeah, right now there’s not much reason to pay attention to them.
different-church-lady
Imagine a politician saying, “If you’re not going to vote, why should I give you what you want?”
p.a.
re:Frum, Walsh, etc, At this moment, we need every anti-tRump, anti-Rethug voice that’s out there. We can worry about opposing them when we get to Potsdam.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
but the problem is the margins are paper thin
lowtechcyclist
@Michael Bersin:
“And you can believe me, because I never lie and I’m always right.” – George Tirebiter
Suzanne
@lowtechcyclist:
Yes thank uuuuu.
The vast majority of the left will vote for whomever the Dems nominate, even if they’re holding their noses to do it. It’s the “centrist” flank I regard with much more suspicion.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
I opposed the Iraq invasion and I actually like Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren/AOC and the rest of the Squad, and am happy to assure you that many of these people are idiots. They are not strategic, and coming from me, that should be considered a deep insult.
These people are really not numerous. But I will say, for those Jackals who are committed to institutions, be they the local Democratic Party, or Congress, or the City Council, or whatever…. younger people have never lived in a world in which those institutions worked especially well. It is therefore understandable they they don’t feel any reason to commit their efforts to them and they look to do things differently.
The real enemy, of course, are the GOP’s voter base.
Tony G
@Baud: Actually, at this point Axl Rose is old enough to live at The Villages. “Welcome to the Early Bird Buffet!”
Tony G
@Suzanne: I despise “No Labels” as much as the next guy does. But, given the fact that they are obviously a “moderately” right-wing group, I wonder how many votes they’ll actually take away from the Democrats.
Baud
@Tony G:
we’ve got rolls and jams
We got everything you want honey, we’ve even got the yams.
We are the people that can feed whatever you may need
If you got the money, honey, we got your coronary disease.
Suzanne
@Tony G: I come from Arizona, where there’s a looooooot of people who have been, as history indicates, happy to mark their ballots for Kyrsten Sinema. And “independents” have a registration advantage over the Dems, by a lot. In my years of canvassing, I ran across many more people who were shitty “centrists” than leftist true believers.
Most of those independents were very swayable to either candidate, because there isn’t the same kind of longtime loyalty to either party the way there is in older parts of the country. And their turnout fluctuated a lot. Most of them are not really ideological, either. They were just generally the kind of low-information voters parodied on SNL. And I ran into them alllllllllllllll the fucken time.
Contrast that with leftist die-hards, who I know exist outside of Xitter, but even on college campuses are pretty fringey and rare.
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
RE: the vast majority of these people will probably vote for the Democrats.
In 2020, the third party vote was much less than it was in 2016. The progressive left or whatever they called themselves grumbled, but voted for the Democrats.
If these people want to make a difference they should find and vote for Congressional candidates who represent their views.
And if they can, they should help to get out the vote.
Because of gerrymandering and other nonsense, margins may be tighter than they should be.
But we have to do what we can and move on. We won in 2020. We can win in 2024.
Geminid
@Tony G: I never thought Manchin had much among Democrats nationwide. He’s a throwback to the old Blue Dog Democrars of 15 years ago. Those politicians are out of office now, and their voters have realigned since.
Geminid
@Suzanne: I think most of the people who marked their ballots for Sinema in 2018 were Democrats. And since then, Mark Kelly and Joe Biden have carried Arizona by keeping those Democratic voters while also winning a majority of the Independent vote, like Sinema did
Betty
@Matt McIrvin: Sorry, but there is a big difference between understanding the mistake of the Iraq War and thinking Hillary was a worse choice than Trump.
Geminid
@Geminid: That would be, “…had much support among Democrats.”
frosty
@satby: Yeah, that was good!
Betty
@satby: I wish the language weren’t quite so salty because his message is so powerful. Just a little much for me to share with family and friends.
Soprano2
@eversor: The problem for them is that not voting is not going to get them any closer to their goals. It’s like the few employees who used to work here who sat out in the garage any time we had a group dinner or party because they wanted to show the boss how disgruntled they were. All they did was show everyone how dumb they were to turn down a free meal and a chance to interact with their co-workers in a pleasant setting. Everyone kind of felt sorry for them.
mrmoshpotato
HA!
I hope he didn’t have to waste too much of his time.
Brit in Chicago
“Biden can be ten times better than Trump, let’s concede that for the sake of argument, I’m not voting for him.”
I literally do not understand this. I can’t imagine how the conversation goes on without it’s ending with “So I’d rather have a worse President in power than a better President.” And then the question is: what meaning of “better” and “worse” could make that even a coherent thought? Not the usual ones, surely.
mrmoshpotato
@Dangerman: Bageled?
Cream cheese or butter?
Makes me feel better about Da Bears’ loss yesterday. :) Oof.
ETA – Or a nice piece of smoked salmon?
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: You know the saying about blind squirrels and acorns, right? They are not better people than you – in fact, they are worse, because their intransigence means that they make little or no progress toward their goals. All or nothing in our political system is a dumb idea. We were watching the documentary on CNN about the 9-11 first responders and their efforts to get the Zagroda bill passed to help them with medical bills, the cost of medication, and the cost of living in general due to their disability. The first time the bill passed in 2010 it was for a lot less than they wanted, but it was a start. It took until 2020 to get it into law in an extended manner so that they don’t have to come back every 5 years and beg Congress to extend it. What would have happened if they had rejected that first bill because it wasn’t everything they wanted and thus didn’t fight for its passage? They certainly wouldn’t be where they are now. Incremental progress is harder than the total victory the “purity ponies” want – it involves a lot of hard work. I think that’s why they reject that approach, they don’t want to put in the work. They’d rather complain to everyone who will listen that Democrats don’t care about them and won’t do anything to help them with their wishes.
CaseyL
@Suzanne:
This! I’ve been saying this for years. The last time any of those institutions were anywhere near fully functional was the 1980s, maybe. The funding was drastically reduced under Reagan, and the Sequester of 2013 took care of most of the rest of it. Local and state governments either took up the slack, or…didn’t.
Suzanne
@Geminid: Sinema has always gotten a lot of Independent and a not-large-but-statistically-significant amount of squishy Republican support. It’s why she won for years there while other Democrats lost (remember that she has had a long career). Dems have hated her for a long time and really only backed her because she seemed to be a consensus candidate and therefore had the best chance of winning. It’s a state where Republicans and registered Independents outnumber Democrats.
I am much more concerned about those low-info voters who would define themselves as being “not really aligned with either party” or “common sense voters” or any of that other bullshit than I am about leftist assholes on Xitter. Like, I’m more concerned about MRSA than Ebola, too.
Chris Johnson
Seems like Cenk and Ana Kasparian have been Russian ops all along… the list of proteges they’ve spit out who have toed a hard Russian line vastly outnumbers those who have not, and they’re now pushing anti-trans culture war bullshit.
I’m not sure why they had to go mask off. Maybe the Russian mob has better places to spend its money these days so they must try harder?
Like Xanderhal says, scratch a leftist who seems to have really great production values and a lot of money behind their production and you might find Russian money. (he doesn’t say that exactly but that’s the gist: whether it’s a Cenk or a Tim Pool, ‘independent’ with lots of money behind the production and no explanation of how it got there, and you’re probably looking at a Russian-funded psyop)
If you then find them pushing culture war, race war, and civil war, it becomes obvious. Cenk and Ana are well along that path and plenty of those who came through their network have gone right off the end of the path into full tankiedom.
Suzanne
@CaseyL: And you’ve been right for years! Like, I don’t know why anyone expects to have younger people show up and pour their efforts into things that very clearly do not work well. Literally, if something is not working well, try something different.
Ken
Probably because it’s glaringly obvious they aren’t the same, now that Trump is way ahead on indictments and insurrections.
Whomever
@Baud: there’s a singer, Richard Cheese, who does lounge covers of very NON lounge songs, and this reminds me of his cover of Welcome To The Jungle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oy84esK_nc
gvg
@Matt McIrvin: Um OK, but I knew Iraq was going to be a fuck up for non leftist reasons. My reasons were pragmatic AND principled. They did not do 911. I found the evidence they had bombs of chemicals or bio weapons to be weak and to strongly point back at our own right wing as planting the evidence because they really had convinced themselves that somehow if we invaded 1) Iraq would end up our ally like Germany and Japan are without any work or blood such as our grandparents put in, and 2) somehow we would get to keep their oil in spite of conquest for gain being not allowed post WWII.
The rest of it was I could see that the Bush administration was completely full of incompetent idiots given to indulging in wishful thinking everytime facts said there was a problem, instead of doing the work or spending the money or even reconsidering if something was worth doing.
I also know it would screw up any possibility of success in Afghanistan. I was always worried about that because it was Bush leading, but they DID knowingly host an attack on us and refuse to give up the terrorists. I felt we had to attack them, although not necessarily that way.
A stopped clock can be right twice a day. The reasons the leftists were against the invasion of Iraq were not all that wise. Of course there are quite a few and they are not all the same so some are better than others anyway.
...now I try to be amused
@Freemark:
Joe Walsh, like other Republicans, understands what many supposedly Democratic voters do not:
Who you keep out of office is at least as important as who you put in.
sab
@…now I try to be amused: That is a very, very good point, locally, statewide, nationally
ETA Please repeat this later in a different timeframe (jackals being nationwide, some of the westcoasters aren’t even awake, much less online.
wjca
Likewise. There is no way they can win, but they might easily play spoiler.
In addition to potentially sucking up enough votes to throw one or more states to TIFG, there is the (very small, very tiny even, but non-zero) chance that they might actually win a state somewhere. Which, in a close electoral vote, could throw the decision to the House. Which makes winning control of the House even more important than it already is.
Geminid
@Geminid: Now I see that Uygur proposed Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, not Joe Manchin, to run on this imaginary “Pro-Life Democrat” ticket.
Like Cuellar’s, Edwards’ name rarely comes up now in national news. Like I said, Uygur is just trolling Democrats, tossing out a crabapple of discord in hopes Democrats will fight over it.
wjca
Plus the detail of President Biden himself. And reaching across the aisle is part of how he managed to get all those progressive accomplishments** done. He didn’t manage to get a lot of Republican votes. But in a narrowly divided Congress, even 1 or 2 votes can be significant.
** Not to mention things like getting the debt ceiling raised. And raised enough to get us past the next House elections. Totally stuck it to the worst MAGAts.
wjca
Still living in the dream of winning a sucker bet, I see.
Jackie
@satby: Those of us who aren’t signed up to TikTok can’t see them.
catclub
@lowtechcyclist:
soft rock.
Miss Bianca
@Freemark:
RIGHT?!! When repentant right-wingers are making more sense to me than “leftists” (my fingers typed “leftits” first, hmm…), then I know shit is fucked up and bullshit.
Maybe it’s always been that way and I just *didn’t* know it before.
On the other hand, actual *Democrats* are as united and determined as ever I’ve seen them. Strange days indeed!
Jesus. I even feel like apologizing to Mitt Romney for laughing at his “Russia is our greatest global enemy” statement from 2012.
Miss Bianca
@Matt McIrvin: Dude, I was against the Iraq invasion *and* the Afghanistan invasion and I was about as hard left as they come and take it from me – those folks *aren’t* better than you. They are as full of self-deceiving horse shit as anyone on the opposite end of the political scale.
@Michael Bersin: Or, you know, what you said.
zhena gogolia
@sab: Yeah, it’s a great point, doesn’t get stated enough.
Jackie
@p.a.: 100% agree. Democrats, ex republicans, never trumpers all share the same goal – keep MAGA out of Office! All offices.
We should be welcoming them, not insulting them.
catclub
@Tony Jay:
Yes. The 2000 model is “Ralph Nader was right on auto safety and consumer protection, but right now he is aiding the Republicans (on purpose) by running.”
sab
@Whomever: That was weird, in a good way.
Jackie
@Suzanne: The same idiots who want to vote for someone younger look ridiculous when they suggest Manchin (77) or Cornel West (70) as alternatives to Biden. 🙄
UncleEbeneezer
You’re wrong. They are not better people than you. If anything you acknowledge and learn from your mistakes and that is better. They can’t/won’t. It’s one of the reasons they are the worst. They’ll never, ever admit the damage THEY did in 2016 and the ways that they continue to make these elections much closer than they should be. I was wrong about Iraq (and W) too. Lesson learned. But I know people who got it right (good for them) but now think NATO is the problem and are spouting Putin-approved talking points about Russia/Ukraine. So while they got Iraq right, they did so as a broken clock, and failed to take the lesson/principle from it and apply it to Russia’s illegal invasion. And despite all the horrors of Trump and the excellence of Biden they still can do nothing but make sophomoric BothSides complaints and flirt with Cornel West. They are not better people, they are self-centered assholes.
UncleEbeneezer
After a pretty long hiatus from real political activism (my wife lost both parents in the past 6 months so we really needed a break) we finally went to a SwingLeft event last night and I was amazed that there was about 100 people who showed up. It was great to see a bunch of familiar faces and see that everyone is gearing up and ready to go for 2024 (and smaller races this year). It’s easy to get down reading polls and spending to much time reading idiots on Xitter etc., but our side (and this is the 10% or so of people who actually do the work) isn’t giving up. It really lifted my spirits and gives me hope. If you have the interest/energy, I highly recommend finding a Swing Left chapter near you and starting to get busy again. Action/Activism is a muscle and you gotta keep it moving. Even just doing a few postcards or going to a party really helps the anxiety and make you feel better. And Swing Left is pretty cool about realizing that not everyone wants to canvass or phone bank so they try and find things we ARE comfortable doing instead of pushing people to do what they are not. Really great organization.
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin:
” They” more than likely voted for nadee and thus were more responsible for iraq than you are.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: ‘Radical Leftists’ are probably crazier than you
Edit: I’m not a radical leftist and I thought Iraq invasion was complete hooey (you can look it up). Ipso facto, you should pay attention to my musings over theirs!
Paul in KY
@Baud: Well said.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: I think (and you were being kind here) that they (radical Left purity ponies, etc) are crackpots and should be derided until they demonstrate some sense: Upping the Democratic nominee, whomever they are, and trashing the GQP with glee.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: Do you see any promising candidates to take on Representative Garcia next year?
Paul in KY
@Salty Sam .: Tell em to keep digging in that huge pile of horse shit. There’s got to be a pony in there somewhere!!
Juju
@different-church-lady: The problem is the electoral college. If we had a normal voting system like the rest of the world, we wouldn’t have this problem. I hate the electoral college.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: They didn’t get into any of that, it was just more of a keep-the-fight, pep rally kind of event. I haven’t looked into potential Garcia opponents yet. I’ll have to check with Indivisible Antelope Valley. I’m sure they know what’s up. But I think we can win that district again since it will be a Presidential Election Year with much better turnout.
Paul in KY
@Miss Bianca: Sen Dog on Car probably does need an apology from anyone who derided his warning.
Geminid
@UncleEbeneezer: I think Ken Calvert could also be knocked out by a Presidential year electorate, as could be David Valadeo and John Duarte. Along with Boebert, Duarte had one of the two closest House races last year.
Hob
@Matt McIrvin: You’re getting a lot of pushback from people who I think may be taking you a little too literally— for what it’s worth, I didn’t read you as saying that you really believe everyone who is or ever was on your left is wise and great.
Speaking for myself, I was against the war and have been pretty far left in principle on most things, in both good and bad ways (was also a Naderite for a hot minute, to my shame), but I feel you. I have friends who I really think are better people than me in that they’re more engaged citizens and activists on a local level, organizing for mutual aid and against police abuses and against far-right incursions, doing concrete work and generally putting themselves on the line to a degree that I never have, knowing more about history and our community than I do, and embodying the best of very-left-relative-to-the-US traditions in action. And some of them are also prone to saying things I think are bullshit, like “Democrats are getting more identical to Republicans all the time” or “anyone who ever worked in the criminal justice system is a total fascist”… so I have to deal with the knowledge that at least some people who are not useless idiots can believe those things. Which doesn’t mean I feel obliged to agree, but it’s uncomfortable.
Paul in KY
@Hob: Excellent point.
phein64
Time to dust off a TBogg classic:
“Every year in Happy Gumdrop Fairy-Tale Land all of the sprites and elves and woodland creatures gather together to pick the Rainbow Sunshine Queen. Everyone is there: the Lollipop Guild, the Star-Twinkle Toddlers, the Sparkly Unicorns, the Cookie Baking Apple-cheeked Grandmothers, the Fluffy Bunny Bund, the Rumbly-Tumbly Pupperoos, the Snowflake Princesses, the Baby Duckies All-In-A-Row, the Laughing Babies, and the Dykes on Bikes. They have a big picnic with cupcakes and gumdrops and pudding pops, stopping only to cast their votes by throwing Magic Wishing Rocks into the Well of Laughter, Comity, and Good Intentions. Afterward they spend the rest of the night dancing and singing and waving glow sticks until dawn when they tumble sleepy-eyed into beds made of the purest and whitest goose down where they dream of angels and clouds of spun sugar.
You don’t live there.
Grow the fuck up.”
brantl
@Matt McIrvin: Sorry the best estimate (using tried and true statistical analysis, shows that it was 1,000,000, not 500,000. I guess you have to feel twice as bad.
Tim Ellis
I was “politically aware but uninvolved” for most of my life until Bernie 2016 got me excited and involved. That campaign felt like something new and different – like finally someone was talking about the things that Millennials cared about, proposing BIG new ideas like universal healthcare (which I’d experienced in Canada and loved). Until then, I felt – regardless of how accurate this was – that while Republicans were terrible, Democrats were at best feckless and unable to deliver and at worst bought and paid for by the same rich corporate dinks as the GOP. That campaign felt revolutionary, and the people on the campaign with me were almost all like me – youngish, formerly checked out, finally excited, ready to do big things and work really hard to create something new. Most of us stayed in touch, and most of us went on to get deeply involved in political work.
2020 felt very different.
In the 2020 Bernie campaign, people were much more aggressive, much more angry. In 2016 most of the team were deeply concerned about Trump and (despite what it may have felt from outside) very very careful to avoid critiquing Clinton too much, as for most of that campaign we didn’t expect to actually win, just to lay the groundwork for better policies. But in 2020 people acted like the path to victory was to go all guns blazing for the other Democratic candidates. It felt like the loudest, worst voices were getting elevated. A lot of my colleagues from 2016 opted out entirely, or went to the Warren or Booker campaigns; I had myself been telling people I thought Bernie shouldn’t run and Warren should be the progressive option this round. It wasn’t inspiring; it was depressing. It got bad enough that I wrote an article telling everyone to stop being shitbags on the internet, and I opted not to continue on after the New Hampshire win.
Once Biden – pretty much my last choice – won the nomination, I sighed a bit then, like almost everyone else from my cohort, buckled down and got to work to elect him, because the alternative was the atrocious fascist. But then something pretty amazing happened: Biden’s team listened to us and welcomed us in. And then he went on to win the election and casually become the best President – by a lot – of my entire life. He and the Democrats have delivered massive wins, and have fought hard for the people I care about and the people who don’t get cared about enough.
All of this to say: there’s a bunch of people who were feeling left out of the political process in 2015 in ways that reflect how I felt, and Democrats listened to those concerns, responded to them, and engaged people like us. It wasn’t always easy, and we had our differences, but we made it work. Today’s Democrats are not the 2015 or 2005 or 1995 Democrats that people (including me) bemoaned my whole life. Today the Democrats are the fierce, assertive, compassionate, working-class party that Berniecrats were asking for, and anyone who got involved in politics because of Bernie should feel right at home in the 2023 Democratic party. I’ve never been more proud to be a Democrat.
If, instead, people are still sniping at the Dems and bemoaning the “duopoly”, then they didn’t care about working class people, they didn’t care about unions, they didn’t care about climate action, they didn’t care about taxing corporations – all huge priorities that the Democrats have gotten done big time.
Just wanted to share because I do find it interesting how so many of the 2016 Bernie cohort went on to become fierce Democrats and activists, whereas so many of the 2020 cohort were Chapo acolytes who went on to become whiney podcasters lol
Tim Ellis
@lowtechcyclist: Heck, I was a *Republican* at the time and even I saw the war was an obvious disaster from the start (the invasion of Iraq is what started me on my journey leftwards). Lots of people got it wrong, especially prominent people, but a lot of people got it right! Really no brownie points in my book for not seeing what was even obvious to me when I was barely out of my teens and voting for the other team lol
wjca
Perhaps you have already done this, and don’t need any outside input. But this experience might, just might, be cause to rethink how you go about deciding which candidates to support in the primaries. (An exercise I have had to go thru a couple of times myself.)
brantl
@gvg: I think Iraq was actually Dubya’s prequal (We’ll fight a war in Iraq and get their oil to pay for it) to Dumps: “We’ll build a wall in Mexico, and we’ll get them to pay for it”!, no less dumb, but then Cheney’s guys were never really a brain trust.
brantl
satby
@Jackie: that was a Twitter link, actually. I don’t have TikTok either.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@different-church-lady:
platforms are the worst. My SO has to soak her feet for hours after walking in platforms.
Bill Arnold
@Old Dan and Little Ann:
She is not the audience for your replies; her followers are / should be the audience.
She’s on Team Authoritarianism, Team Capitalism, Team Climate Gigacide, Team Make The Future A Hellscape, Team Theocracy. She does this by working hard to help Republicans win elections.
Bill Arnold
@eversor:
If that’s what they care about, then their transactional refusal to vote for Democrats is breathtakingly stupid and selfish and amoral.
Tim Ellis
@wjca: Much thinking has occurred, I can assure you lol
In 2016 I was very new to the process and, I think, only Bernie or someone like him was likely to get me activated and involved. So I don’t think that could have been different for me.
But 2020, I think my biggest mistake with Biden was underestimating his skill at politics and legislating; I thought Obama had been naive trying to do bipartisan things and felt Biden was replicating that same mistake, but Biden has since proven me very wrong. I also thought Biden would lock us (Bernie people) out of the process the way we felt (rightly or wrongly) we got locked out after 2016’s primary, but here too Biden was much shrewder than me; he correctly sensed that there was a lot of energy behind Bernie’s ideas and movement, beyond the shouty angry folks, and tapped into that by listening and adding those ideas. It’s textbook centrism, but it turns out that people are centrist for good reasons lol. And I think that’s a big part of why young people turned out so big for him.
I made many other mistakes too (I often do!) but underestimating those things is what I think was my biggest error about Biden and I won’t make that mistake again. I voted against Trump in 2020, but in 2024 I’m happily and proudly voting FOR Biden. And I’m persuading every one of my Bernie cohort buddies to do the same, every chance I get.
Citizen Alan
@Geminid: If david valadeo were smart, he’d switch parties. He voted to impeach trump, which means he’s always going to be vulnerable in a republican primary for the rest of his career. I think he would enjoy being one of the most conservative democrats a lot more than he’s presently enjoying being one of the most liberal republicans.
Citizen Alan
@Tim Ellis:
You felt wrongly. The clinton campaign literally allowed sanders surrogates to write the entire platform for the democratic party. And after spending the entire convention loudly booing hillary clinton at every opportunity, including when her name was mentioned by the BLM Mothers, those same surrogates walked out and immediately declared they were voting for stein.
wjca
@Tim Ellis:
Allow me to say that it’s a rare and impressive man who can (and is willing to) stand up and say: “I definitely got this wrong. And here’s why, so I know not to make that particular mistake next time.” (*I* certainly find it extremely difficult!
Paul in KY
@Bill Arnold: Yeah! Boy will they get all that by voting GQP or voting for 3rd party weirdos & thus helping the GQP win.
The Red Pen
[Late to the party]
Anyone remember the site “HillaryIs45” from 2008? It was held up as an example of how people were abandoning the Democratic Party because Hillary was snubbed in the nominating process. The site was full of cranks and not a small amount of racism. I did a deep dive and determined that it had a couple dozen active posters. It was clearly a right-wing ratfucking operation.
The site continued to post every bullshit, racist attack on Obama for 8 years — all in the name of Hillary? No. Because in 2016 it shifted to attacking Hillary and supporting Trump. They didn’t even try to explain how “HillaryIs45” was suddenly anti-Hillary. And, of course, anyone still following the site didn’t need an explanation. They knew what they were really about.
The politics of resentment leads only one place.