This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Biden won a competitive primary in 2020. If he was Obama's annointed successor (he wasn't - part of the reason why Obama chose him as VP was that Obama thought he would be too old to run in 2016) he would have been on the ballot in 2016. If the "party decided" in 2020, then almost everyone who mattered in the Democratic Party would have endorsed Biden, when in fact the endorsements were all over the place.
Fundamentally, Biden won because none of the wonkier centrist candidates could win the support of the black political machines who deliver a plurality of the Dem primary vote, so the other centrists (by the time the voting started, that meant Buttigieg and Klobuchar) had to drop out and endorse Biden if they wanted to crush the Sanders/Warren wing. This was obvious to anyone who understands Democratic party politics after the South Carolina primary.
The fact that the best available talent on the centrist wing of the Democratic party in 2020 was Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar says something less-than-positive about the state of the American centre-left.
And this was the moment of anointing. Biden did not enter the primaries anointed- Biden was anointed into the primaries by how the inner-party party reacted in the face of an emergent threat to their control of the party as a whole, rather than allow an outsider wing raise as a result of voter preference in the primaries.
This is a bait and switch argument. At first the claim was "The party has current problems because instead of healthy party politics deciding leaders, they anoint whoever has the most name recognition or seniority in the previous regime", now it's "After a somewhat rigorous and unpredictable primary process with votes and wins all over the place, eventually they coalesced around a candidate who they thought was best (And who did in fact end up winning), which proves he was anointed"
Or, alternatively, it's re-affirming the original argument by not letting the counter-argument smuggle in assumptions (such as that a party-annointing must occur in advance of primaries) that are neither necessary nor disprove the previous argument.
Do you believe that the winner of the 2024 presidential election will only win because they were anointed by voters on November 8th? That seems like the weakest-possible stance.
It's a good thing that is not my stance, then.
If you would be willing to explain where I am wrong or even lay out what your belief or thought is I would be happy to read it. Hope this helps.
The anointment argument is not that Biden was anointed by voters on November 8th, but in the Democratic Party inner-party coordination during the Democratic primary before Super Tuesday when the Party establishment successfully coordinated the majority of Biden's centrist rivals whom he been stuck amongst to drop out and endorse him. This was done in a context where this needed to happen to consolidate the centrist share of the party vote, who no one had been dominated to that point, vis-a-vis the insurgent Bernie Sanders, who up to that point had been on a Trump-esque trajectory of being one of the biggest minorities.
Between the coordinated pullout and endorsements of Biden, and the tactical stay-in by party institutionalist Elizabeth Warren that split the party left/Bernie-base vote, Biden was basically uncontested by any significant rival (except Michael Bloomberg) to the right of Bernie/Warren going into Super Tuesday, which inevitably produced an overwhelming victory on his behalf, as opposed to the forecasted muddle if the earlier-primary patterns had held. This provided the contested primary that Mozer was referring to that Biden won, as the counter-argument to @Mewis's critique of the Democratic Party relying on designated successors instead of (intra-)party democracy.
Mozer's argument was that Biden won a contested primary, and thus there was no anointing, and uses the endorsements during the contested phase as proof of this position. This relies on the assumption that an anointment must happen before the primaries, with any contested phase disproving there being an anointment.
This is an invalid assumption. There is no requirement for when an anointment/successor designation has to occur. It doesn't even counter what a successor / anointment can be considered to be.
The anointed successor argument is that the party coordination to clear the decks is the anointment, to the benefit of the designated successor. It's the institutional-driven, rather than voter-driven, pressures to determine a primary winner. Biden did not win Super Tuesday, and then other dropped out as is/was the normal causal relationship in primaries with a healthy intra-party democracy- rather, others dropped out, so that Biden could win Super Tuesday.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think it's more about the party base than its leadership. Like you said, the black political machine is huge in Dem primaries, and they came out big for Biden. Buttigieg and Sanders did great in the early, mostly-white states of Iowa and New Hampshire. But then along came South Carolina with its huge black population and just absolutely crushed it for Biden. Almost half of the vote to just one candidate in a multi-way race, and more than half of the delegates in a fairly large state. No one else could touch him after that.\
It's an interesting question as to why he won so much black support. You might think Harris would have won their support, since she's part black. Or maybe someone more progressive. But no. They went hard for the fairly moderate guy who was also Obama's VP. In that case, being VP meant a lot. But I don't think that, say, Mike Pence would enjoy a similar bump- even the most ardent Trump supporters don't really like Pence.
He’s fairly moderate, tied to Obama, a bit quirky, very party insider, known quantity, straight man, professional politician. That’s what the black political machine seems to like.
I'm convinced it's something about his personality/charisma. Bill Clinton had a similar effect on the black community. It's like the affable alpha male politician who looks like he's having a blast whenever he's campaigning.
Biden is not that.
He absolutely was before he went senile, e.g. in the Obama years.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I think this is tied to some specific events in January of 2021.
did they like him before that though?
More, certainly.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Ahh yes - the competitive thing where everyone simultaneously dropped and endorsed you after a lot of backroom dealing.
A lot of the current mess dems are in could be traced to them trying to stop Bernie twice.
this reasoning is just straight forwardly poor. Bernie only looked like he had a chance because the centrist lane was crowded. When it became uncrowded he had no chance. This isn't "trying to stop Bernie". This is a group of 20 friends, 2 of which want to eat at the same slop house and the remaining 18 of them each preferring a different steak house deciding on a particular steak house that was only one guy's first choice rather than take a vote at the restaurant level and end up at a coordinated minority's preference.
A tremendous amount of people came out of that primary thinking that they should have been allowed to win because other candidates were obligated to keep splitting the ticket 8 ways in order to give him an opening. It's ridiculous.
More options
Context Copy link
There were shenanigans around the primaries, but Bernie fundamentally wasn't sunk because of them. He lost because he was a rando with extremely out-there political views from a tiny lily-white state, who didn't resonate with the Democratic Party as a whole. (It bears pointing out that the online activist/college student crowd, although having outsized influence on media, are not at all representative of the Democratic base.)
If elite and donor contempt was enough to sink a candidate in a primary, Trump would never have been able to win his.
More options
Context Copy link
Deal with the devil.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link