Shaun

"if the current senior figures of the democrat party had a binary choice between the US getting a universal healthcare system or trump winning the next election in a huge blowout, they'd enthusiastically pick the latter"

I'm sorry, what? Where exactly did Shaun come to the conclusion the Democrats would prefer Trump win if it meant denying UHC when they've been trying to push for it since FDR?

And I know he's from Britain and perhaps not familiar with American political culture, but I would think someone would at least do a little research on why someone referring to the Dems as the "Democrat party" raises some red flags.

Edited by KoBB on Apr 2nd 2024 at 12:18:39 PM

It's not like there's a whole other party in the US fervently opposed to any policy proposal from the Dems or something.

This guy's a fucking idiot.

Statements like Shaun's is why I'd rather remain progressive than further to the far-left.

Uh, maybe you should take this to the US politics thread? Not really talking about Shaun at this point

It's been locked for entirely too long at this point.

To try and tie this back to Shaun, is he a proponent of accelerationism? He's been very critical of Biden when it comes to certain issues, particularly Israel/Palestine, and he's no fan of Starmer either for how he's shifted Labour towards the center after Corbyn. In both ways, he talks about them as if there is zero difference between them and Trump/Whatever Conservative PM is in charge right now, and that continuing to vote for the Democrats/Labour just to keep the GOP/Tories from winning is perpetuating an intolerable status quo.

And while I've never seen him endorse accelerationism or outright say "Trump/the Conservatives should win to send the Dems/Labour a message", a lot of his talking points tend to be echoed by those who believe their respective left-leaning parties must lose and lose big in order to discredit liberal centrism as an election winning strategy and force a pivot far to the left.

Edited by KoBB on Apr 2nd 2024 at 6:56:49 AM

It's come up in his tweets before.

He's really, really not. The thing he's pushing against is a very, very distinctive and annoying as hell trend in American politics.

"I don't like this thing Biden and the dems are doing."

"How dare you criticize Biden, you just want Trump to win, how would you feel if Trump would win, wouldn't Trump winning be horrible, if you criticize Biden, you're telling everyone to vote for Trump!" Meanwhile, Biden and the Dems just skate by because they realized that people are doing this and use it to their advantage.

This behaviour shows up regardless of context and includes things like haranguing Palestinian-Americans who have a very good reason to not like Biden and cases like that union in Michigan deliberately voting for no candidate in the primary, which got the same "if you don't vote for Biden, you might as well be voting for Trump!" thing, which was irrelevant in a primary.

It is bad actually to react to every criticism of Biden with wailing and gnashing of teeth about Trump and it means it's nearly impossible to actually address real and severe problems. Because Biden being criticized by his base shouldn't be responded to by dogpiling by people so scared of Trump that they'll attack people whose families have died because of Biden's policies, it should be reacted to by Biden realizing that he's doing something deeply wrong and stopping it.

Because of this, the Dems institutionally ignoring their base and stuff like Starmer repeatedly going "we will stand against the Tories on this! What, the Tories don't like it? We'll just do what the Tories are doing then," the result is that voting for them really doesn't fix the problem and constantly screaming BUT OTHER GUY WORSE at people where the other guy really is going to be about the same for them just alienates people more.

There's real, genuine problems, and the people in power in the US and UK really don't seem to understand what the problems are.

He doesn't want Trump or the Tories to win. But acting like criticizing the alternative is exactly equivalent to handing votes to them is ridiculous.

Edited by Zendervai on Apr 2nd 2024 at 10:16:55 AM

This goes into another issue I have with Shaun's takes when it comes to U.S. politics. He frequently castigates the Dems as a party of do-nothing sellouts and incompetents who rely on imagined fears of what Trump and the GOP will do to keep their base in line. Yet by that logic, Obama wouldn't have pushed for the ACA after he won election. Biden wouldn't have done Covid stimulus or the IRA, etc.

Edited by KoBB on Apr 2nd 2024 at 7:41:58 AM

Look, this is veering close into US politics which is already a banned thread, so it's best to drop it for now.