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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Yes, a party to the right of the racist who won on the back of a silent majority of racists who thought civil rights had advanced too much.
For not electing the guy anointed by Saint Bernie, our Lord and Savior.
edited 25th Feb '17 3:36:08 PM by math792d
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.![]()
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Well, you can, Sanders did in the primaries using a crowdfunding-esque model. (he was slightly ahead of Clinton at times and remained competitive until the very end) Taking corporate money means you are more or less powerless to take a stand against corporate interests (they'll pull the plug on you and fund your opponents if you go too strongly against them), and considering the extreme wealth inequality we're experiencing, that's something that really has to happen if we want to remain a functional democracy; the slow decay towards oligarchy was happening long before Trump, and would have continued had he not been elected, though probably at a slower pace.
edited 25th Feb '17 3:41:53 PM by CaptainCapsase
They're not 'being an idiot', ignoring the fact that there were substantive, non-policy related differences between them (first and foremost Perez refusing to speak-out against lobbyist money), can you blame people when the DNC says 'we don't want you' for answering 'okay, then we'll leave'? If even Ellison, who had widespread mainstream support and was extremely qualified for the position, wasn't able to win this election, what hope can progressives ever have to be represented by the archaic instutions of the Democratic party? Of course, if people leave the Democratic party over this (and as I said, I'm sceptical about this), it will likely be a very small minority, seeing that there simply is no other choice for (sane) progressives.
Actually yes. Isn't that sad?
Republicans weren't indoctrinated to vote against their complete self-interest until Reagan's time.
Mainstream democrats are fiscal neoliberal conservatives.
Nixon was a more liberal president than candidates like Obama and Bill Clinton.
Freaking Obama says he would've been a moderate Republican in Reagan's time.
edited 25th Feb '17 3:45:25 PM by MadSkillz
I could care less about principles; the issue is the kind of policy changes that desperately need to happen (increased wealth distribution) aren't the kind of thing that major corporate backers of the democratic party will tolerate. They'll simply pull the plug and fund the GOP the moment serious steps towards meaningful reform are being talked about among democratic brass, so a democratic party that depends on corporate money won't dare to even go there unless things get so bad that an outright violent revolution is looking possible, which is what it took for moneyed interests to actually consent to major redsitributive policies back in the 30s.
edited 25th Feb '17 3:47:26 PM by CaptainCapsase
Decided on a new avatar on account of the current political situation.
Regret that Ellison didn't win both because I like the guy and because I'm tired of how eager leftists are to sabotage the Democratic Party and maybe Ellison winning would have (depending on how you look at it) mended divisions/shut them up for a bit.
But this attitude leads to a resignation of a corporate run world where our government ends up a front for the will of corporations.
I should've changed it around. I'm on a phone and it makes typing hard sometimes. Fiscal conservatives and neoliberals. Happy?
And yes fiscal conservatism is the ideology of Third Way Democrats. Bill and Barack are both Third Way Democrats.
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The democratic party for its part seems rather unwilling to make meaningful changes to accommodate the left, which is the precise impasse that I was referring to with my earlier references to the rise of the Nazis, which was something that both the German left and center can be faulted for enabling.
edited 25th Feb '17 3:52:18 PM by CaptainCapsase
The only other option is to let Trump run rampant and hope things get bad enough that a revolution starts looking seriously possible, because nothing short of the threat of being killed en masse by angry mobs backed by a significant faction of the military will get the economic elite to consent to major wealth redistribution.
All the scenarios likely result in the end of democracy in favor of an oligarchy of some sort, but my opinion is the "find another workable funding model for your elections" is the one in which our odds are slightly less hopeless than the others.
edited 25th Feb '17 3:58:21 PM by CaptainCapsase
Would one of the Berners in this thread be so kind as to provide a quote from someone connected to the Obama White House saying that Perez was put in to stop a Sanders choice from being selected?
I'm not saying that this is an illogical interpretation, but you have claimed that this was outright stated, and I'm extremely skeptical of that claim.
Edit- Also, what I find kind of weird about the idea that the spot was deserved by Ellison and was sabotaged by Perez is that a) this is exactly the same thing Sandersites accuse Hillary Clinton of expressing (and seem to be totally unaware of their hypocrisy) and b) even though those two were the frontrunners, there were several other people also running and I don't see any Sandersites saying any of those people shouldn't have run.
edited 25th Feb '17 4:02:22 PM by Hodor2
The thing the radical leftists tend to miss is that corporations are not inherently good or bad. It really depends on the ethics of who's running them. (A corporate entity, as a non-person, is inherently amoral but the people running the show can steer it toward doing good or ill.)
Idealy, corporate interests and politicians would negotiate with each other to come to a balance between regulation and libretarianisim (small-L). If they are ignored or pressured out, they can pick up their ball and leave. We want them on our side too.
@Physical: When it came to the incumbent party brass, yes, obviously. We'll have to see if the constituency feels the same way, but if the party wasn't out of touch with its base, voter turnout among key democratic constituencies wouldn't have collapsed last November and Trump wouldn't be President.

@rational Sanders kind of proved that wrong. Yes, he still lost but he was competitive.
All you need is enthusiasm for a candidate.
edited 25th Feb '17 3:36:12 PM by MadSkillz