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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Progressive endorsement of Markey was completely appropriate, it showed that the Left is willing to accept people with checkered records if they're willing to support the proper policies. It was a clear repudiation of purity politics.
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangThere was no acknowledgment of Markey's checkered past. Overnight he became a progressive hero, someone who had boldly fought for decades for the right things. By the same people who threw fits when Clinton and Biden tried to meet them halfway. It's especially ridiculous as Kennedy himself tried to pivot tot he left well before. He was for the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, promoted a civil public defender's office which progressives actually mocked him for...
Pelosi backing a member of her caucus in a senate primary isn't the same as not supporting primaries against house members, either. It wasn't purity politics being refuted, it was just like with Bernie Sanders; pretend the imperfections others get torn down for don't exist in the person you like.
Edited by Lightysnake on Dec 11th 2020 at 10:41:39 AM
Some of these people were screaming about the Clinton Crime Bill while tripping over themselves to excuse Bernie for voting for the damn thing. We were told how inexcusable the Iraq vote was and how nobody who voted for it had any right to hold elected office.
Then Markey (and I don't think I saw any of them address the Telecoms Act and Bloomberg) gets a hug from AOC and it's a ton of foot-shuffling and mumbling how those don't actually matter that much. Or that he's a Great True Progressive who Fought The Establishment for decades.
You know, there are total reasons to support Markey, namely he's a tried and tested Senator and politician and now one of like 99 percent of Senators who won against a primary challenge, but people having strong feelings on the race was freaking weird. I didn't even know Ed Markey had strong feelings on Ed Markey until this year.
Edited by Lightysnake on Dec 11th 2020 at 10:46:02 AM
Sure, but a good chunk of the criticism isn’t being aimed at activists who came up with the slogan, it’s being aimed at AOC and other progressives who aren’t responsible for the slogan. The Dem house members who are angry they lost their seats aren’t blaming BLM activists, they’re blaming AOC and Bernie. They’re certainly not blaming the Democrat mayors who could have at least tried to work on this problem years ago.
Better than before, Congress isn’t in charge of police funding, that’s a local government matter. Normal it’s city government, and often a city government controlled by Democrats.
Which touches on another thing, Democrats having the ability to control police hasn’t resulted in them doing so, police brutality has been allowed and supported by a number of Democrat mayors. The voters who matter to the activists aren’t congressional voters in rural areas, it’s voters in their city. If they can get a city council majority that supports controlling the police then that’s a win, potentially regardless of who controls congress.
Edited by Silasw on Dec 11th 2020 at 6:48:41 PM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranBernie did vote for it, but with great reservation, he felt like he was stuck between a rock and a hard place, this is what he said about it (from wikipedia): "because it included the Violence Against Women Act and the ban on certain assault weapons." He was nevertheless critical of the other parts of the bill. Although he acknowledged that "clearly, there are some people in our society who are horribly violent, who are deeply sick and sociopathic, and clearly these people must be put behind bars in order to protect society from them," he maintained that governmental policies played a large part in "dooming tens of millions of young people to a future of bitterness, misery, hopelessness, drugs, crime, and violence" and argued that the repressive policies introduced by the bill were not addressing the causes of violence, saying, "we can create meaningful jobs, rebuilding our society, or we can build more jails."
As for Pelosi, again the stated policy is don't endorse challengers to incumbents. All things being equal, Markey was the incumbent.
You can only write so much in your forum signature. It's not fair that I want to write a piece of writing yet it will cut me off in the midI don’t think criticizing “defund the police” from a policy or strategy perspective is particularly helpful, because it isn’t either of those things. That line of criticism isn’t going to go anywhere. It’s an emotional reaction to centuries of violence perpetuated by the US government against minorities, whether it helps democrats downballot or effectively communicates policy goals is irrelevant.
It’s worth noting that police reform in general is pretty popular, even if “defund” isn’t. Also worth noting that a full reform package will probably necessitate increased funding, not decreased funding.
Edited by archonspeaks on Dec 11th 2020 at 10:55:38 AM
They should have sent a poet.Please stop this. I'm tired of "Bernie voted for it. But he did it with great reluctance, with sorrow in his heart and for the right reasons." I don't care. It's a nuance that is afforded to nobody else. Oh, and Sanders kinda lied because he voted for multiple tough on crime measures and waved those votes like trophies to prove he was tough on crime for decades, argued for the building of more jails and voted for the Crime Bill absent those portions in earlier forms.
So no, I don't care what he later says to excuse himself. The man could vote against the Amber Alert system because it's imperfect, he doesn't get a pass on this one. He's long unable to claim "nuance for me, not for thee" and frankly Sanders' inability to ever just say "I was wrong and I'm sorry" while demanding it of others?
Um well but I am saying that it's not hypocritical to criticize Biden more considering he made the thing, so no I won't stop. I'm bowing out, because I don't want this to get nasty (although I feel it already has).
You can only write so much in your forum signature. It's not fair that I want to write a piece of writing yet it will cut me off in the mid![]()
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The way an emotional reaction gets channeled absolutely can be challenged as helpful or hurtful. People should be heard. But if they're being heard in a way that actually hurts them and the people they're trying to help and the policies they want to enact because of that anger? Yeah, maybe it really needs to be channeled in a direction where it's actually doing some good.
Republicans are getting crazier and crazier. The Supreme Court has no authority to divide States just cause.
The problem is every single time Bernie Sanders makes a bad vote or does the wrong thing, even when he is outright lying about his reasons for it, or his history on it is poor, he gets excused for it. Every. Single. Time.
It's also been proliferated "Biden made the Crime Bill" which is't directly true either. The Crime Bill was a massive undertaking involving lots of people and a great deal of time. Biden's most significant contribution was the Violence Against Women Act.
Edited by Lightysnake on Dec 11th 2020 at 11:30:13 AM
Umm are you confusing every bernie supporter for a bernie bro? Cause I think you're falling into the same fallacy that they are. They think their guy is perfect and make sweeping generalizations about him, you're just doing it in the opposite direction. I don't think Bernie is perfect. I liked him and voted for him in 2016 and 2020 (albeit I would've voted for warren if she hand't been out of the race by that point, still I did vote for her delegates). I don't always excuse and I think you'll find most of his fans don't always excuse him either, just a vocal contingent do. Most of his supporters voted for Biden this time. With regards to the crime bill, I find it far more palatable to support a guy who criticized it when he voted for it, rather than a guy who was part of the committee who made it and the president who championed it.
You can only write so much in your forum signature. It's not fair that I want to write a piece of writing yet it will cut me off in the midEven assuming that of the two, only Biden used iffy racial rhetoric / supported iffy racial policies (i.e. opposing bussing), which I doubt, it is very obviously bad faith to treat Sanders support for the Crime Bill as completely virtuous and Biden's as completely malevolent.
Biden has been a really big advocate against domestic violence for a long time, so there's no reason besides bad faith to treat that as a motivating reason for Sanders but not for Biden.
Also, I don't really have a good knowledge of their respective positions on the assault weapons ban, but (correct me if I'm wrong) that's something that Biden supported more than Sanders, right?
I'm saying the online segments? It's hard to ignore Sanders gets passes almost nobody else does and that the behavior around his campaign in 2016 and 2020 was...pretty bad, particularly in the latter when he hired twitter trolls to run large portions of his campaign.
I don't like him because he was a backbencher who sat by for years, then decided to run on everyone else being corrupt while making cynical conspiracy theories acceptable, lambasted the people on his own side with a heaping sense of entitlement despite being barely different on policy who swung more left on healthcare. Sometimes progress means getting your hands dirty with the system we have and I didn't like Sanders deciding compromise was good for him but nobody else.
Look, his campaign in 2016 devolved to the point he was lying that the Pope invited him to an anti-poverty summit (when he invited himself) and then tried to photobomb the Pontiff as a hare-brained scheme to help with New York Catholics. Clinton losing meant we had to endure 4 years of "Bernie Woulda Won" and then came the 2020 campaign when Warren became a terrible centrist neoliberal snake for daring to say Sanders might have said something sexist and unkind.
Edited by Lightysnake on Dec 11th 2020 at 11:44:14 AM

Fauci does not deserve it either. Any random doctor or nurse would've been better.