After all, can you imagine a Republican stating these obvious truths?
VP Kamala Harris straight gutted European Settlers earlier today. #GOAT pic.twitter.com/h2jiffPtOA
— Madam Vice President Harris is GOAT! (@flywithkamala) October 12, 2021
This does not mean I agree with everything she, or the Democratic party, says or does, but that there is a clear, distinct separation between the two parties on at least some issues, and I’ll always go for the one that doesn’t lie about our history.
Of course, the chuds will turn this around, screaming “SEE!!! KAMALA ADMITS SHE HATES WHITE PEOPLE!!! IT’S THE GREAT REPLACEMENT!!!”
Get 80 million or so people to join you, and we have a plan. (I wish I were so optimistic.)
Did they cancel the primaries? You should vote against her. And before that, you’ve got a few years to not act like she’s the anointed one.
The Republicans deny there is global warning/climate change, but Dems, despite claiming it’s our number one priority, still accept fossil fuel company money and turn a blind eye toward pollution. The Republicans deny white supremacist terrorism is a threat (for obvious reasons), while the Democrats will claim it’s a threat while not unleashing the power of the police and the miltary on the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, militia kooks. (If anything you’ll see liberals/leftists wring their hands about the nonexistent “civil rights” of Nazis and that “escalating violence” is a bad,-bad, no-no.) Republicans deny income inequality and the moral bankruptcy of capitalism while Democrats pay lip-service to unions and fighting poverty but claim that capitalism can be somehow “saved” or “reformed.”
As horrible and fascistic the Republicans are, at least they’re honest about their beliefs and practice what they preach. The Dems, not so much.
LOL, the rage stroke the Vicar will have while typing a response to this is going to be epic.
I am and have been a Harris man for years. With half of congress acting like children, it’s time we handed the keys over to a no-nonsense mom who can wrangle the idiots.
The really sad thing about the Democratic party is that there doesn’t seem to be anybody other than Kamala waiting in the wings to step into a leadership role atm. Of course, there might be somebody waiting to swoop in from nowhere and grab a following, like Yang or Buttigieg, but I’m a traditionalist in looking mainly at governors and senators — we’ve seen recently what happens when the presidency is your entry-level job into politics, and it wasn’t pretty. I’m not even sure if Transportation Secretary is enough seasoning for Buttigieg — the guy isn’t even 40 yet.
Biden, Sanders, and Warren are just going to be too darn old in 2024. (Of course that may not stop Biden from seeking a second term, but it should.) Otherwise it’s just old white guys as far as the eye can see.
Who does that leave us who can excite the voters? Whitmer? Duckworth? Booker? I dunno.
Any thoughts?
@ 7 brucegee1962
it’s just old white guys as far as the eye can see.
I thought there was an age requirement for US presidents. Is it lower than 70?
Come to think of it, this reminds me of the USSR gerontological Politburo.
Ugh. Blue Lives Matter redux holds no appeal. It didn’t for the Democratic candidates in the last two presidential elections either. Are you getting tired rooting for the darling of the national security blob?
@jrkrideau(#8):
There is a minimum age, 35, but no maximum. Also, being born in the US or having at least one parent that is a US citizen, and at least 14 years of residency in the US.
Kudos to this eminently sensible choice for what it’s worth, but it is bizarre to me that the skeptic community remains so alarmingly naive about the state of American politics. “There is a clear, distinct separation between the two parties on at least some issues” is a wildly misleading understatement. The Republican party is openly fascist, racist, misogynistic, and is in the middle of a frighteningly effective campaign to replace our democracy (such as it is) with a permanent minority-controlled authoritarian state.
Its 2016 presidential candidate explicitly campaigned on using the power of the state to punish his political opponent, framing her opposition as fundamentally illegitimate (Lock Her Up). They regularly legitimize political violence and encourage stochastic terrorism against their opponents. They are currently installing loyalists to state electoral committees in as many states as possible who will refuse to certify elections in which the Democratic candidate wins in 2022 and 2024. Experts are shouting from the rooftops that 2020 may well be our last free and fair national election if action is not taken to protect electoral integrity and voting rights.
The Democratic party of 2021 is a huge tent organization with members ranging from knee-jerk conservative to democratic socialist. It is currently the sole vehicle for democratic governance in the United States. Anyone who needs to hear caveats such as “this does not mean I agree with everything she, or the Democratic party, says or does” in 2021 are either dangerously underinformed or shamefully disengaged in the lives, welfare, and rights of their fellow citizens.
jrkrideau, #8:
Our constitution gives these minimums (and like Who Cares said, no maximum):
25 — US Representative
30 — US Senator
35 — President & VP
States have their own requirements for governors, state legislators, and other offices — generally from 18 to 30 (see here).
jrkrideau@8
Yup. And to put it in perspective, Chernenko was a young man of 73 when he died in office.
I see jrkrideau being corrected seriously, but I read this as a snarky suggestion that 70 is now the minimum age.
I agree with jaylemieux@11.
European settlers pretty much acted like the Jan 6 mob and taught their descendants to do likewise. Maybe republicans should be calling the 1/6 people “settlers” instead of “tourists”.
@mattandrews, #5: Good one! I’m waiting to see that.
@11
there are few things left out those are the major points if anyone says they can not see the difference, they are lying or just a stupid and resentful idiot.
@ 14 PaulBC
:)
@#5, mattandrews:
Why would I bother typing up a detailed reply when #4 already says more or less what I would say? (Oh, except that I see they failed to point out: it isn’t just that the Democrats won’t sic the police on right-wing terrorists, most of the places where police violence is at its worst are Democratic-majority cities with Democratic governments in states with Democratic governments, so the Democratic Party, regardless of what its rhetoric may be at any given time, is not merely unwilling to stop police violence but is actively behind it.)
Speak of the Vicar!
It’s really pretty simple: There are only two parties that have any reasonable chance of winning control of the House or the Senate, or of winning the White House. One of those parties is actively working to limit access to voting, and sowing systemic mistrust of the democratic process, even in places where they won. They’re basically the worst option for any hope of continued democracy.
Protest votes for outliers, votes for ‘outsider’ third-party candidates that can’t possibly win, and all other forms of ‘not voting for the other party just enable that ‘worst option’. It’d be nice if politics could be aspirational, but right now, we should be pragmatic.
@22
some where I read that politics is the art of the possible.
most people have ideals and aspirations which help guide us in making the inevitable practical day to day choices we must make to live.
some do not have ideals and will kill for what they want, some can not bend even a little and will die first.
Okay, but the 2024 general election isn’t “right now.” The primary elections themselves are still years away, yet those do come first and should be the 2024 focus now, if you’re going to think about that stuff at all.*
I don’t think it does us any good to be constantly distracted by D. vs. R. general election talk, as if that were the only conversation that’s ever worth having. I think the “pragmatic” approach is to recognize that almost everyone here already knows the Republicans are awful, but we’ve also got no control over that party’s platform or leadership.
Meanwhile, some do apparently need help with the concept that we should have better Democrats, and that we can do things about that. Those who don’t actually want this to happen need to stop deflecting and dissembling — they should have to say so and explain why it should be a conservative party that also isn’t too appealing to card-carrying Republicans. If you’re going to be pragmatic and whatnot, then actually put that shit into practice and tell the rest of us what that’s supposed to be about.
*That said, the 2022 elections are a more immediate concern. It happens every time, so I’m ready to bet that in 2024 there will be totally valid complaints that we’re still not focusing enough on down-ballot races or mid-terms, because it’s all POTUS all the time.
unclefrogy@23
If you find it, you may want to point it out to a few of PZ’s regular contributors. Not just Vicar.
I know, I know, I’m sure they heard it. Who said it, anyway? Otto von Bismarck? That’s the first reference I find, though I’m always skeptical of attribution. And for that you get, what? A battleship, a city in North Dakota, and a donut named after you. (Heck of a lot better than I have done.)
@4
You may have seen some randos on Facebook “wring their hands about the nonexistent ‘civil rights’ of Nazis and that ‘escalating violence’ is a bad,-bad, no-no” but you did not and will not see that from prominent left-wing members of the Democratic party.
Here’s AOC in August 2019: “Don’t let Neo-Nazis on TV,to buff their image or couch racism in “reasonable”-seeming terms/appearance!Sounds obvious but it just happened a few wks ago. Supremacists are experts at manipulation,incl manipulating smart people. You will open a box you don’t know how to contain.”
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1158404416917123072?s=20
Here’s Ilhan Omar on 1/6: “The guise of White supremacy has proven to be very deadly for our country and for its people, and for far too long, people have not taken it seriously.”
Omar cited law enforcement’s delayed response in last week’s Capitol [insurrection] as “very different” than the police response to the “uprising that was happening in the summer for the lives of Black people.”
https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/rep-ilan-omar-calls-americans-guise-white-supremacy/story?id=75276177
Ayanna Pressley on 1/6: “For those that continue to feign great surprise about what happened on January 6. As a Black woman, to be barricaded in my office, using office furniture and water bottles on the ground in the dark that terror, those moments of terror, is familiar in a deep and ancestral way for me…”
“I want us to do everything to ensure that a breach like this never occurs at the Capitol, but I want us to address the evil and scourge that is White supremacy in this nation. This is not only about securing the Capitol to ensure that members and our staffs and custodial staff and food service workers are safe in the Capitol. It is that we are safe in America.”
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/07/politics/pressley-white-supremacy-capitol-riot-trump-cnntv/index.html
And rounding out the Squad, Rashida Tlaib to Individual One: “How dare you even try to pretend you have not given white supremacists and Neo Nazis even more power in this country?
We will always stand with our Jewish, Muslim, and neighbors of all faiths against your type of hate.”
https://twitter.com/rashidatlaib/status/1103502298280546304?lang=en
Now, whether they advocate for “unleashing the power of the police and the miltary on” white supremacist militias is complicated by factors including the fact that many police departments are heavily infiltrated by these same groups, and deploying the military to enforce domestic laws is a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
@#20, the Vicar:
You literally wrote a post saying there was no need for you to comment based on another person’s post and then followed it up a run-on “Democrats are evil incarnate and worse than the GQP” rant.
If nothing else, you’re good at staying on-brand.
Part of me still thinks you’re a Russian hacker trying to foment divisions among leftists in order to help the Republicans solidify a permanent grip on the US.
If not, you should look into it, because you’ve got the skills and it probably pays pretty good.
@27
I think that there may be more to his selection of that particular “handle” then just being obscure. It was a deliberate choice that certainly describes his attitude.
I do not need any priest nor agents with pastoral duties.
some people do not seem to understand that there is a spectrum of people who hold office and work under the banner of the democratic party. that banner was not always seen as liberal. It is today tomorrow it may change, AOC and the rest of the “progressive” fighting under that banner also deserve my support and speak for my desires any body who is even half paying attention can clearly see that there is more to it then manchin and sinema
to bad there is not an authoritarian left wing party we can all join in lockstep with!
maybe our priest could start up one for us all to join.
I want to repeat my question from @7 to the commentariat: aside from Harris, who has a reasonable shot at getting the nomination once Uncle Joe steps aside? I’m really curious as to who could rally the left wing, now that Bernie and Elizabeth are pretty clearly Too Old.
@27 mattandrews
We’re all Russian agents in your worldview, aren’t we?
MSNBC’s flipside of the Qanon conspiracy is such a bore. It was discredited years ago, yet they’re still finding rubes who will repeat this nonsense…
I know enough people like The Vicar in real life that he doesn’t sound anything like a Russian bot to me. My favorite is a friend of a friend on FB who bragged that he has not voted for a winning presidential candidate since before 1972, always preferring a 3rd party choice to any Democrat.
“Part of me still thinks you’re a Russian hacker trying to foment divisions among leftists”
I disagree — nothing the vicar has said rises to the intelligence needed for something like that. The safe the bet is simply that the vicar is, like conciosunessrazor, simply a jackass.
@11: The Democrats are transparently center-right by any reasonable standard.
Yes, 2016 changed the traditional leftist calculus from “not a dime’s worth of difference” to a very real difference (and it was tragic to see many leftist analyses that were already not a good look in 2008 when leftists were grousing about the first black President become outright vile – fuck off Jimmy Dore). Yes, nowadays voting Dem is signaling that one is voting against fascists and with marginalized people, which is why I voted Dem for the first time in my life in 2020 and will likely do so again in 2024 unless the next Republican Presidential candidate is closer to Bush than Trump.
But Biden had no plan to change American foreign policy, regarding Afghanistan or anything else. His hand got forced. The Dems can’t get meaningful health care reform through, now in large part because Obamacare is now associated with their party. The Dems are happy to sanction and threaten Iran. (And the Biden administration’s Iran policy is laughable: https://zcomm.org/zmagazine/class-struggle-or-get-it-in-the-neck-part-2/) . Biden has flip-flopped on fossil fuel subsidies. The Dems in general happily endorse tons of corporate subsidies. Even someone like Chris Matthews has to admit that the Dems won’t do things like try to lock minimum wage increases to productivity because they have political incentives not to. They’ll also keep funding for useless military projects in their districts for the same reason. It’s not just folks like Manchin who’ll take petro dollars for their campaign, either. One can go on and on.
The central point that the left has always made, that the Democrats are a business party who represent those businesses who are happy to see things like gay marriage but will not actually make structural changes to truly protect marginalized people, remains true. The only thing that changed is that in 2016 the Republicans finished their metamorphosis out of proto-fascism into the full-blown thing. But we should never forget that the Dems are not our friends, and are in fact partially responsible by repeatedly siding with the default of a system engineered to protect the powerful rather than standing up to the Republicans, and we should not stop pressuring them. In fact, this is the time to push even harder: The fascists have proven that you can transform a business party; the left needs to do the same to the Dems.
@20: Vicar, I lean closer to your views than the average commenter here, I think. But…
1) To say that the Dems necessarily support police brutality because of your uncited claim that Dem cities lead the problem is just gross, gross oversimplification (what your entire argument hinges on, actually!) A party like the Dems can control the Mayor’s office and the legislature, and still see that they can’t actually implement their agenda because of interference from conservatives in countless ways. Conservatives clog up the courts with objections to Dem proposals, organizations like ALEC make sure to back centrist Dems and Republicans, conservative media demonizes their proposals, etc. Even if every Dem across the country were to be totally committed to stopping police brutality, it would be a fight. In fact, it’s quite telling that you chose this issue to try to fight, because, well, have you heard of police unions? A big part of the story of police reform since the 2000s has been good ideas being stymied by police unions, lawsuits and other forms of sabotage. But in your world, “political capital” doesn’t exist.
2) Even more centrally, to say that the Dems are “actively behind” police brutality ignores that there is another possibility, the actually true one: The Dems are complicit because being perceived as muscular on law and order is electorally useful. The Dems have not fought the issue as hard as they could and, like most centrist parties, very much like having the police rhetorically and practically “on their side” as it were. The consequence of that is police brutality, but it is not as if Dems are twirling their mustaches and hoping that more black folks get beaten, which is an implication of your poorly-phrased rhetoric.
3) That is all a bunch of bloviating rhetoric to ignore the fact that it is only the Dems at the national scale who have any chance of changing policy with things like marijuana legalization, pushback against private prisons, etc.
4) Harris still did something major that is critically important. (Yes, she is a cop and has a liberal cop’s mentality to policing and law enforcement which is an issue). You not admitting that is really telling.
Symbols matter, Vicar. There is more than a dime’s worth of difference between a party that will recognize that marginalized people exist and one which will erase them when they are being nice.
@26: The problem is that the left-wing Democrats do not represent the party. They’re not the ones with control of the agenda. I like AOC and Bernie. Doesn’t mean that the Party as a whole is defined by them.
I wish a few of those who are criticizing the lack of difference between the D’s and R’s could spend a little time in my little corner of DumbFuckistan. Rural north Georgia, went 80:20 for Trump.
.
We will probably not have a single D candidate for county office. The only announced R running for post 2 on the County Commission is a neo-Nazi whose resume boasts one stay in state prison and two terms in Federal prison. One of the federal prison terms was for the beating of a black man who had the nerve to date a white woman. The victim was “left for dead.”
.
He’s the odds-on favorite.
.
Keep on telling yourself that there’s no difference. Maybe one day you’ll get a real difference, when the shit-show currently playing in my neighborhood comes to yours.
.
I hate it for your neighbors, but some of you just might deserve to live with the consequences of the purity test of which you are so fond.
@35 opus
Which is entirely the fault of the Democratic party. They’ve given up before they even began, in that case.
It leaves room for a third party or a write-in candidate to be the serious opposition instead, so I’m not complaining. But if you want to vote for team D so badly, maybe ask the Democratic party officials in your area why they’re denying you that option.
Frederic Bourgault-Christie:
An odd statement. This is lacking some relevant info, such as when you were first eligible to vote and who you did vote for (if anyone) prior to 2020. But leaving that aside….
If the R is closer to Bush, you’re likely to vote for them? Or is it just that you’re not likely to vote for a Dem in that case?
I don’t get what makes it not “full-blown” going all the way back to at least the Reagan years.
I know that there are lots of perceptions or narratives about a metamorphosis, typically among the very people you describe as being interested only in things that won’t affect them negatively….
But what Trump’s voters wanted and what they actually got was more of the same small-government, corporate-welfare, belligerent Reaganism that they’ve always been pushing. Put a little extra clown makeup on Reagan, and you have Trump.
“It would be a fight” is an excuse for someone who isn’t committed.
Pretty sure there’s no actual dispute that many are craven and spineless, not only cruel.
But despite being (at least historically) a pro-union party, police unions still don’t tend to support them. So this whole fantasy just seems to be a bunch of delusions or lies.
And please: don’t call it “centrist.”
Like what? You mean her speech linked above? Vague allusions to stuff I was taught, much more effectively, in fucking grade school. “Obvious” PZ called it. And I think that if a few decades ago some rural, conservative Catholics could do better with 3rd or 4th graders (who really should be treated like children, unlike the voting public), then maybe you shouldn’t consider that much of a selling point. Our standards have become abysmal, for whatever reason, and now anything that’s not utterly horrific is supposed to be embraced, celebrated, propped up like a major accomplishment from “the GOAT.” It drives me fucking crazy.
And look, you didn’t admit, for instance, how awfully we’re treating Haitians right now. When was it going to be time to bring up ICE and so forth, rather than only addressing “police brutality”?
Or how about, Monday, when the secret service clashing with environmentalists outside the White House? (Led by indigenous groups who are protesting specifically the Line 3 pipeline, along with many other aspects of our farcical climate/environmental policy.)
Or how about the surveillance state (widely supported by Dems) that’s been ramped up ever since 9/11? Or all of their “complicity” with the military-industrial complex?
I’m willing to assume that one possible reason why you didn’t mention (or “admit”) various things like these is the same reason everybody else would give: because it would be hard to fit it all into a relatively short piece of writing. But usually, I wouldn’t draw any important conclusions out of that, because it’s not very “telling” most of the time.
beholder@36
What if the question isn’t “Whose fault is this?” but “What effective action can be taken to fix it?”
It’s also not true that self-identified Democrats are by definition ineffectual. Stacey Abrams accomplished something amazing in Georgia by motivating voters to show up and making sure their votes were counted. She’s atypical though. How do we get more of within the party?
I doubt I disagree with the Vicar nearly as much on preferred outcomes (though I do) than on the likely means of accomplishing them. No, I don’t think that being a “loyal” sleep-walking Democrat will lead to anything good (right now we have Biden, who is much better than Trump, but a stalled Congress and the likelihood of a midterm rout next year). You need to influence organizations with actual power or else create your own new ones (which is harder and risky). I don’t see “Republicrat” theory as accomplishing much in either direction. The parties aren’t actually the same. If neither are good enough for you, then that’s a reasonable viewpoint, but if the response is to squander your votes on parties and candidates that don’t stand a chance, your gesture is only symbolic.
PaulBC:
Then your answer is that the party should support good leftist candidates for those county offices.
I don’t think anyone said it was so by definition.
And the word “also”? What was the point of the first quote above anyway?
First maybe notice that those Senate seats were not actually the accomplishment of just a single person. Really not. That’s a fact.
Relatedly, it can be quite counterproductive to give so much attention to presidential elections, which comes at the expense of everything else because people do only have so much time….
So, for example, brucegee1962 still wants an answer (three years in advance) about the one perfect 2024 candidate to rule the all, the one who needs to satisfy all sorts of arbitrary criteria (was a senator/governor, older than 40, etc.), with a belief that this one person can deliver a vital “win” for the party. We must search for this person until they are found. (This is only if you’re not already assuming it will be Harris — if so, at least act like you’re playing along.) If it’s deemed that someone doesn’t seem to be enough of a family-friendly, #1 chart-topping, pop hit / blockbuster type of candidate, then just toss them back to sea quickly (if you’re feeling merciful) or attack them for their perceived shortcomings.
But in fact, there is a huge community of capable people, who actually do a lot of good work but don’t have (or won’t be granted) the kind of celebrity status which is expected of “leaders.” Such people and their work are neglected or even undermined, the more hyper-focused we become on this bizarre and very much rigged selection process to find a single candidate for POTUS every four years.
Is that a good thing? Not likely, if you’re looking to have a larger number of capable/effective people like that within the party. But maybe you will get more unprincipled, cynical, lying, cheating hacks and careerists, who will do almost anything to get to the top of the pile.
@38
It doesn’t sound like you read past the first sentence, PaulBC. Try reading the whole comment, and also the one I was responding to.
This is a specific scenario. The Democrats aren’t fielding a candidate for at least one county office, probably not for any of them. What action, pray tell, does “squandering” my vote mean in such a race? Not voting for the neo-Nazi likely means not voting for the winner.
It’s a situation that’s practically begging for a leftist third party candidate to jump in the race, to establish a meaningful opposition. If you don’t like that, you should yell at the Democrats and demand that they get up off their asses and field a candidate.
@Beholder
The russian agents thing posting as third party supporters has been confirmed by most intelligence spurces when they investigated the initial problem of russian interference. Its not a conspiracy.
Of course that was a long time ago. These things dissappeared as soon as the results were anounced. They dont exist anymore and we should stop calling people that.
Vicar is not a russian plant. Hes just an authoritarian. He thinks the police should systematically oppress fascists except hes called Biden and his follows fascists as well. So we all know where hes headed here dont we? He voted for Trump for fucks sake. Simply to own the libs. Hes a hard left communist who doesnt gove a shit about democracy. He would be scary were it not for the fact that irrational leftists like himself know fuck all about electoral politics and how to make any gains or effective change. Im going to take a wild guess and say hes a privleged white kid.