With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.
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Notes -
And yet she was evidently damn good at her job, and it seems to me that it ain't the same working class, nor the same neoliberalism, nor the same world for that matter. She fought for liberty and against bureaucracy and communism.
He's the first politician I've listened to who could bring up interesting data-points I hadn't heard of before. I'm looking forward to his presidential bid. His "convenient origin story" happens to be his actual life, born to drug addicts and working his way up to the vice-presidency of the united states. Certainly his story looks considerably better than Kamala's.
I'm pretty sure I wasn't. I was planning to vote for Hillary until Trump cinched the nomination, because I wanted the neoconservative wing of the Republican party destroyed forever. She was quite unpopular in much the way Trump is, but 2016 was a very close election. I am pretty sure that I have never agreed with the moderate talking point that Hillary was a uniquely bad candidate and the only one the Dems could have picked that would have lost to Trump. I think if Trump could beat her he could likely beat most of the other Democrat contenders. I think she's a very bad, very corrupt politician, but that doesn't make her bad at securing power or an unserious candidate in the way Kamala was.
And he was, in fact, actually suffering from dementia, a problem that only got worse throughout his term. And Progressives sticking their fingers in their ears about it is how he was allowed to vegetate in office, which is why they had to dump him at the eleventh hour, couldn't get their actual talent to sign on, and were left with running Kamala. His dementia actually was real, actually cost him the race, and after more than a decade of Progressive claims that Republican presidents were senile (a common accusation against both W and Trump), they collectively missed their own candidate actually going senile right in front of them. And sure, I claim Biden was a bad president, because I think the record pretty clearly shows that his policies had numerous woeful effects in the real world. The exception, of course, was the Afghanistan Pullout, which I think was a masterful achievement and which I will defend against all comers.
I'm not on your side. I'm opposed to your candidates, because I disagree strongly with their policies and values. But I, at least as an individual, am actually trying to speak honestly here: Progressives have suffered multiple, severe unforced errors due to believing their own bullshit. Their control of the consensus narrative has made them lazy, and now that this control is failing, they're stuck in a position where the main effect their spin is having is to compromise their own decision-making. Biden was in fact too old, as was RGB when she tried to hang on till Hillary. They should have picked a running mate who could actually run for his VP, but they were too busy playing identity bingo, and besides, it was an article of faith that he was sharp as a tack. They did this to themselves.
I am pretty sure it is in my direct interest for Progressives to see things the way you do.
I predicted a Trump win, with weak confidence, based on a lot of factors that seemed to be leaning his way. This does not appear to have been a coin-flip election; pretty much every state in the country shifted right by significant margins, with Donald Trump as the candidate. As recently as two years ago, IIRC, Democrats were still directly funding Trumpian candidates in Republican primaries, hoping that public revulsion for him and his supporters would make them unelectable in the general. But as I said above, I am pretty sure that Progressives doubling down further is pure advantage for my side. By all means, don't let me dissuade you.
She was good at her job based on what, winning elections? Justin Trudeau won as many, after breaking 9 years of conservative rule, yet I doubt you think he's a particularly good candidate or Prime Minister.
As for fighting against bureaucracy and communism, these are just partisan buzzwords. 50 years ago, our ancestors were sitting in a pub bemoaning the sorry state of British politics and the terrible candidates and the country going to hell in a handbasket because the new generation was a bunch of pussies.
Not to mention it's telling that you picked a politician from 50 years ago that (I assume, based on the apparent age of your children) you were barely alive for in a country you never lived in. I'm willing to bet that 50 years from now our grandchildren will lionize the greatness of Obama and Trump without having to deal with the shitty day-to-day reality we inhabit. I'm willing to bet that very few people think [current year] politicians are particularly talented.
Whatever - without guessing the particulars of who you have voted for, would you agree that my characterization fits a broad swathe of the at least the American public, and likely the local commentariat?
As for the 'historical unpopularity' that gets thrown around constantly - this absolutely drives me up the wall. Look at favorability polls (first figure). Insofar as Trump and Hillary were historically unpopular, they're just continuing a 70 year old trendline with vanishingly few exceptions. Do you think our politicians suddenly became retarded and unlikable in the 90s? Here's a bet for you - the next pair of candidates for both major parties will be historically unpopular (say the bottom quartile of favorability). Want to take it?
I actually largely heard this from progressives and the right, not the center? If anyone liked Hillary it was the center. Bernie bros ain't moderates.
Because if we had 25th'd Joe out (presumably he wasn't about to leave on his own)in the middle of the COVID and inflation shitshow and let Kamala run things for 2 years, this election just would have gone swimmingly for democrats? If you think 'the actual talent' refused to sign on this year, they 100% wouldn't have signed up in your hypothetical. Not to mention you'd be sitting here lecturing me about how stupid it was to 'allow' Joe to get elected in the primaries in the first place, or something.
And...you think progressives like Joe Biden? Is this just some Overton ploy to define Joe as a progressive such that everyone to his left is some insane fringe radical, while Trump and Vance live in the center? Public figures endorse him because they hate Trump, but Joe Biden was not the progressive candidate of choice in 2020.
I disagree. With the exception of inflation (and who knows whether the counterfactual recession would have been better or worse than inflation, or whether there actually was a center path that avoided both) I think he's been on point and centrist for the most part. CHIPS act and infrastructure are both great (though we'll see if either can actually be implemented in a meaningful way, there seems to be a lot of grift), the economy is doing well (just watch - the economic doomerism on the right is about to evaporate with the election alongside the voting fraud narrative), he tried to push immigration reform. The manufacturing sector is doing better under Biden than Trump. But I imagine this is an entire separate discussion.
We're all on the same side here, brother.
And what was that mistake, not being leftist enough to inspire the workers revolution (cf Freddie De Boer, Bernie bros)? Not being centrist enough (cf Tracingwoodgrains, stupidpol, I'd guess some MSM outlets in the next few weeks) to win the suburban wine mom vote? You all agree that progressives are stupid and lazy and mistakes were made, you just completely disagree about the directionality.
Here's a different narrative - in 2020, Biden wasn't senile yet and won the primary. In 2020, the focus was on winning the election in front of you, because there's four years to worry about the next one. He governed well, although Harris got some tough assignments and the optics for both of them were bad with COVID/inflation/Ukraine/Gaza. Ending lockdowns would have enraged one section of the population as much as enacting them would another. Bombing the shit out of Gaza or taking a hard stance against Israel both would have pissed off a core constituency. Refusing to fire up the money printers may have triggered a recession that would have lost the election just as surely as inflation/idpol/whatever else actually did.
As an aside, you say identity bingo, analysts say lock down the black vote because you're an out-of-touch old white man. For all you know Biden would have lost in 2020 with a different VP pick.
Y'know, the funny thing is Trump will probably push policies that benefit me more personally. Please cut my taxes and kill my competition from China, what do I care?
Whatever. Anyways, you think I'm an arrogant, complacent and intellectually lazy progressive who can't see the flaws in his own party. Leaving aside whether any of those are true, I just think the arguments here are lazy, superficial and mostly ignorant of the realities of governing and winning elections in America. Discussing politics is >95% hindsight bias.
If it wasn't a coin flip election, why did you have such weak confidence? And given your uncertainty, why would you say running Kamala was a mistake if you (and presumably the dem machine) couldn't have predicted her loss in advance?
Four years from now, conditional on the Trump faction losing the general election, will you be here saying you guys fucked up and Rs had better learn from their mistakes? Somehow, I doubt you'll take that L particularly gracefully if past experience is any indicator. I know the drill - time to reach for the fourth box, the election was rigged, America will be destroyed by a communist dictatorship.
I hope Trump is as successful as you think he will be, and that our country flourishes over the next four years.
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I think pulling out of Afghanistan was the right call. I think how they executed was terrible. They were managing to a sept 11 timeline. That’s dumb.
Even the Biden administration gave strategic credit to Trump in trying to defend their tactical blunder. “This was the timeline Trump negotiated” was their refrain.
Yet it seems plainly obvious that if you’re going to exit the county, you retreat to your strongest position and exit from there. And you don’t leave unspoiled equipment for the enemy to use.
Why in the world would the last point of exit be the civilian airport and not the military airbase?
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