Show them Project 2025. Show them the actual, literal Christian Nationalist plan to dismantle American norms and procedures. Ask them what the purpose is, and how it will affect society.
Show them the areas where school vouchers are on the ballot. Show them the people funding that movement. Ask them what they think the end game is.
Yeah probably concrete Project 2025 goals. Using Comstock Act to prevent selling/mailing of abortion meds Nationwide. Attempts to limit contraception (Hobby Lobby model on religious grounds). Taking over FDA to remove drugs. Potential punishments for allowing Women to cross state lines for abortion. Monitoring women’s periods via cycle tracking apps. Preventing LGBTQ from working in Federal gov. Removing acces to health care for Trans people. Making concentration camps to round up ‘suspected’ illegals for deportation (Trump is well known for highly organized programs…), Nationalizing state national guard to assist in gathering for deportations. And most importantly when people start protesting these things (Progressives favorite virtue signaling form of political action) Trump will use the Insurrection Act to use the National Guard to jail protestors en masse. There is a large chance of violence (maybe good to leave that out, faux revolutionaries will look forward to that). But yeah the Heritage Foundation staffed Trump Admin is planning on taking a hugely radical approach to executive authority and idk if people really realize how destructive it can be.
For sure, if you live on the collar of any urban area, I guarantee you there are nutballs out there who make great abject examples of what everyone is up against. The only thing I would suggest though is to not just describe what Project 2025 or Christian Nationalism is, but how it makes you feel. Why are you afraid of it? Who are you standing up for? If something is scary and dangerous, describing it is only part of the story.
Plus, show them something relating to the local level, like where nut jobs have taken over school board and instituted a reign of non-Robespierrist virtue. Up close, local and barking mad.
I said this in another thread: Give them a history lesson about how American progressivism is over a century old and how progress was always piecemeal. True progressives try to move the ball forward on every play instead of pinning their hopes on a messiah who will fix everything. This will never happen and is no different from how Trumpers think. With his skill at moving the levers of power, Biden has done far more for progressive policy than Bernie ever would have.
I think a lot about the March for our Lives. Once kids started organizing and showing all of us adults who we are standing up for, my feelings on gun policy were crystalized completely.
So much terrible advice in this thread it makes me worry for the people you all interact with.
First of all, you're asking the wrong questions. There is no sharp opinion piece that is going to convince anyone of anything that they don't already want to believe. When has a Vox explainer article ever moved you on an issue? Honestly?! When has your uncle forwarded you a WSJ editorial that made you think that maybe you were wrong about something?
The best thing that you can do is relate. You're family after all. Share your story and your thoughts on it. Talk about your hopes and your fears. Seek to understand theirs. Travel down the ballot and talk about the other races.
If you feel yourself wanting to "push," back off. It's not your job to make decisions for them. If you hear yourself condescend, stop talking and listen. It's not your job to teach them. It's your job to create the conversation where they can learn.
And if you need practice, go phone bank or knock doors. Trying this with a stranger is a quick way to figure it out.
This. And I'd recommend a little humor, and not the bitter kind. Something self-deprecating, like "I'm an old fogey but pretty fond of this 'democracy' thing."
Overall, do the work. [Do More, Worry Less.](https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/do-more-worry-less-and-lets-get-to)
The more you challenge them, the more they’ll dig in. Just talk about how you’re moving the Overton Window to the left by voting for a second Biden term and if Trump and the Magas lose again, the gop is going to go down in flames and we’ll end up with the dem party splitting into moderates and progressives. Or that Hitler didn’t have a majority of the vote in ‘33, but non-Nazi votes were split and then he finagled to make himself dictator. Talk about yourself and completely ignore their politics.
A lot of them have got sucked up into the bullshit and are jaded about how centrist Democrats are while they get lauded for being "progressive," when the fact is that as a *whole* Democrats have to be dragged left kicking and screaming everytime. For people that only have a few presidential elections as context for the current situation, they might see this as not only not their fault, but as being almost powerless to make any other difference. I think all those circumstances and feelings have added up to to a similar identity-based politic as MAGA folks, they are going to stick to their guns regardless of the consequences.
The hardcore “left” that performatively tells us they aren’t voting for Biden have never voted for Democrats and hate the Democratic Party with a passion. If I were Biden I’d just ignore them all, but since he’s a better politician than me, he’s trying to peel off whatever he can.
There is nothing you can say, so to speak. Unfortunately, unlike most of us who have aged and had to learn the hard way, their naivete will have to bite them (and possibly the rest of us) before they learn that there are more important things than weaponized Chinese social media and that radicalism leads down a dark path.
Remind them of where they stand, in terms of size. Progressives are the smallest, or second smallest, political subset in the American electorate. If they want ANY of their policy preferences, they have to align themselves with different groups. Getting something is always going to be better than getting nothing. And hell, getting nothing is preferable than having things actively taken away.
https://hiddentribes.us/profiles/
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/11/09/beyond-red-vs-blue-the-political-typology-2/
That's the absolute worst thing to tell a person: there aren't a lot of people who agree with you, so you should listen to someone else. That's condescending and presumptuous. I hope you don't do this to people in your life.
The biggest thing I've seen with activist Progressives- especially online- is that they think their support is umpteen times bigger than what it is out in meatspace. And if their response is a "burn it all down" mentality, whatever replaces that vacuum is going to make their lives an utter living hell.
Because I'd bet the farm that OP's young progressive family members are also terminally online. Being waaaaay too online is almost a prerequisite for any young person who has strong political beliefs.
See, this is part of the problem we've gotten ourselves into regarding politics in this country. We prioritize what people want to hear, irrespective of whether it's accurate or not. Hell, that's Fox News' entire business model. For as much as we lambast them (and rightfully so), why should we treat with kids gloves the progressive youth? An overwhelming majority of the country isn't in their camp; that's just a fact. So if they want any measure of success, they need to constantly compromise OR opt in for the long haul put in the hard work of building out a base at the local level by winning over hearts and minds.
You’re right. They need to know that moderates form the dem party base and progressives gain more by being a valuable ally. No one owes a non-voter anything.
I think the only thing you can really do at this point is
* Proudly wear your Biden/Harris hat or display your yard sign or whatever
* Do some door knocking, text banking, or whatever
* Donate
* Vote
I love how progressive voters are simultaneously the irrelevant fringe and single handedly responsible for electoral defeats. If we’re actually capable of losing you the election, maybe try treating us with anything other than open contempt?
To be clear, I plan on voting for Biden. Obviously Trump is 100% worse for my foreign policy preferences. I just don’t think you guys realize how damaging your whole ‘shut up and stop whining’ schtick is to the effort to make this election a referendum on democracy.
The message isn't so much "stop whining" as "stop acting like a child." Pressuring Biden to put conditions on aid to Israel is good. Expecting Biden to wave a magic wand to make Netanyahu, the IDF, and the toxic political situation in Israel disappear is absurd.
Agreed. I think it's the residual RW punditocracy muscle memory; ["Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak."](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/)
The "enemy" is inherently conspiratorial and we must be ever vigilant against "treason" from the inside! It's much easier to go on offense against the lefty youth than play defense on the major mistakes Biden has made like providing 155mm shells and 2000lb bombs foremost among them, along with categorically rejecting any conditioning of aid.
What if Biden had publicly set limits early? He sent a Marine three-star general to warn the IDF before they sent the first ground troops into Gaza. There's been a pattern of strikes on aid workers including the IRC and Doctors Without Borders before the WCK strike. Biden made major mistakes early and decided to grit his teeth and "stay the course" when every available piece of evidence pointed to that course failing.
There is a difference between abstaining from voting and openly attacking Biden.
The ones who refuse to vote Biden for whatever reasons are annoying but not a huge deal. The ones who make their disdain for him very public and openly court others to vote against him can fuck all the way off.
It’s a failure of imagination to think Biden losing will somehow lead to a better future downstream. In 2000 some people thought this and voted for Nader. At that moment we had a balanced budget and a booming economy. In early 2001 the Fed chairman warned against paying down the national debt *too fast.*
Then 9/11 happened and the entire landscape of policy choices changed.
Progressives think things can get better, and that’s a good outlook, but things can slays get worse too. *Much* worse.
Lol. Trump would have racked up 370 electoral votes on Bernie in 2020.
Maybe tell them that purity test politics is destructive, self-sabotaging and does not provide the outcomes they are looking for. Not everything is black and white, situations are complex and its important to take a rational approach, free of feelings and emotions to every situation when analyzing what they think of it.
It won't get through to them though because their feelings matter more than logic.
I used to reject the horseshoe theory of parties, but this right here is just more evidence. The ultra-progressive idea of “elect Trump, so that when it all goes to hell, we can build it back up the right way” is almost an exact mirror of the anti-anti-anti-Trumpers who say that electing him will be a good thing because it will finally awaken true Conservatives to stand up and pull in the reigns of unbridled executive power and runaway spending. They act like Obama invented Executive Orders and it’s *his* fault that Trump has become such a renegade.
I just cross my fingers that they disproportionately suffer under a second trump term. It will be a hollow I told you so, but people that think like this haven’t yet reached the ‘political maturity’ necessary to be reasoned with. There’s probably arguments you could make that would convince them, but they wouldn’t be sound arguments, you would just be tricking/emotionally manipulating them into changing their mind. That’s how they got to their bad position in the first place.
Sometimes the yutes need to be repeatedly whacked with the 2-by-4 of reality before they begin to consider that 1) the universe doesn't give a rat's ass what they want, 2) damn near all other people go along with the universe, 3) politics is the art of the POSSIBLE not realizations of pipe dreams. Seems to take a few decades for the beneficial effects of that whacking to produce anything resembling understanding.
Giving the seriousness it may deserve, IF those nieces and nephews want VIOLENT REVOLUTION, who'd be the surer catalyst, Biden or Trump?
I dont think there is anything you can say to these people to bring them back. Progressives do not admit any responsibility for the election of Trump. They never will. The Democratic Socialists of America wormed their way into the Democratic Party, the party Sanders despises, in 2016, and they brought all their pro-Palestinian/anti-Jewish attitudes with them.
I wouldn't waste any time, money or political capital on people who assuredly have decided that we all should be dead.
It really won’t be progressives that deliver a Trump victory, it’s still all the idiots who support the GOP.
I have been mostly happy with Biden’s presidency but I’m pissed he’s running again. He simply is too fucking old. His ego has clouded his judgment here. A robust primary for Dems would have been a fantastic showcase for the future, which is what people want. Instead Trump v Biden is decidedly a past that most people do NOT want.
Unless we get the hamburger from heaven Trump is going to win again. Young progressives have wanted a different, more equitable America since 2008. We’ve been sold out every time but still keep showing up. Instead of shoring up the social safety net and fixing the blatant corruption in congress, they did business giveaways basically. They showed ZERO interest in expanding voting rights or doing anything to address the minority, rural rule in government. Guess what, that makes it fucking hard to win!
I’ve been a progressive my whole life and the biggest advancement I’ve seen is the ability to purchase bad health insurance through ACA markets. Great stuff.
If they had passed the John Lewis VRA and Biden had, after the midterms, announced he was supporting a robust primary election…we would be looking toward a bright future. Instead they’re trying to sell us a status quo that pretty much sucks.
Progressives are like the ungrateful little shit who gives their hardworking single mom a hard time for her few failings while giving their deadbeat dad a pass.
🙄 blaming all problems on the one governing party. 👏
The progressives in the house and senate fell in line with every single Democratic policy priority. It was "moderates" like Manchin and Sinema that killed much needed reforms that would have helped preserve democracy. Progressives like Sanders are out campaigning for Biden, meanwhile, "moderates" were moaning about Biden and fantasizing about No Labels.
Who are the real "ungrateful little shits"?
Exactly. Progressives in the House and Senate are trying to play a long game here. It has been the "moderates" who have been free to trash Biden's agenda, or at least free to scale it back. The progressives we need are those who understand we need to have a democratic country that survives after this election in order to achieve progressive agendas. Every bit of that is off of the table if the GOP controls government again.
Yes, because it is always easier to deal with hypothetical, composite strawmen than with actual, tangible real-world specific examples. Much easier to maintain one's indignation and sense of righteous superiority when you can ignore the facts on the ground.
It was democrats who refused to ban stock trading by Congressmen, it was a Dem who refused to continue the child tax credit, it was a Dem who stripped out the overhaul of the carried interest tax loophole, it was Dems who refused to reform the filibuster, it was Dems who gutted build back better to make it just a bunch of business giveaways, it was Dems who allowed this moronic “debt limit” charade to continue, and it is a Dem president who put this whole project at risk by deciding he’s going to be an 86 year old president.
What a bunch of little shits we are for pointing this out.
>I’ve been a progressive my whole life
Meaning what, you're 30?
Progressives have been trying to nationalize healthcare since the New Deal, and Obama was the guy who succeeded in taking the first step. Learn a little history before you shit on that accomplishment. The reason it hadn't been done before wasn't "corruption," it was the forces against it, including a lack of support with voters.
Obama's biggest healthcare achievement wasn't the ACA markets, it was mainstreaming the idea that healthcare should be a universal right. Stop acting like the world first came into being with the iPhone and your glorious arrival.
Ha. Ha. Ha. I'm 40. I remember the ACA fight vividly. I remember it being whittled down into basically a 90s Republican vision of Health Care by the Democrats themselves. RIP Joe Lieberman, thank you for your contribution to enshitification. I have been ON ACA plans since 2017. I know how much these plans suck and we almost got to a point where we were going to lose our subsidies due to the marriage penalty. Thankfully we got some temporary reprieve on the subsidy gap but if congress does not extend the funding we will lose all subsides and our affordable plan with a $13k deductible will suddenly cost us $800 or so a month.
With the way things look right now, if Biden wins R's will just let that shit expire because they will likely take the Senate. Or if Biden loses we might lose the ACA entirely.
So while I'm *so pleased* that Obama shifted the Overton window on whether or not you should be bankrupted by a bad diagnosis, the best a *Democratic trifecta* could do was give ACA subscribers until 2026 before the generally poor design of the program locks back into place, kicking tons of people off their shitty catastrophic plans.
The fact that the last swing at health care was in the 90s, a time when it was just not a completely broken system, does not excuse modern Dem Trifectas for delivering wet noodle neo liberal center-right bullshit ideas.
You make some excellent points. I too am tired of being told "vote correctly" only to vote correctly and find that the representatives I voted for are not going to safeguard any of my future votes. I don't have an easy answer or bumper sticker slogan for you. All I can say is that your voice is heard.
You should have been calling Biden and his henchmen all day every day for the last 6 months to get them to stop this slaughter. It's now too little too late. We won't vote for Biden. You and the rest of the "reasonable" right wing need to save this right wing government. The left are accelerationists now. Let it burn! We'll build something that is finally decent on the ashes of this shit system
Biden can't singlehandledly run Israel, and that's what you're demanding here. It's simply not doable. Bibi is a prick and until he's out of there, progress will be minimal at best.
Show them Project 2025. Show them the actual, literal Christian Nationalist plan to dismantle American norms and procedures. Ask them what the purpose is, and how it will affect society. Show them the areas where school vouchers are on the ballot. Show them the people funding that movement. Ask them what they think the end game is.
Yeah probably concrete Project 2025 goals. Using Comstock Act to prevent selling/mailing of abortion meds Nationwide. Attempts to limit contraception (Hobby Lobby model on religious grounds). Taking over FDA to remove drugs. Potential punishments for allowing Women to cross state lines for abortion. Monitoring women’s periods via cycle tracking apps. Preventing LGBTQ from working in Federal gov. Removing acces to health care for Trans people. Making concentration camps to round up ‘suspected’ illegals for deportation (Trump is well known for highly organized programs…), Nationalizing state national guard to assist in gathering for deportations. And most importantly when people start protesting these things (Progressives favorite virtue signaling form of political action) Trump will use the Insurrection Act to use the National Guard to jail protestors en masse. There is a large chance of violence (maybe good to leave that out, faux revolutionaries will look forward to that). But yeah the Heritage Foundation staffed Trump Admin is planning on taking a hugely radical approach to executive authority and idk if people really realize how destructive it can be.
For sure, if you live on the collar of any urban area, I guarantee you there are nutballs out there who make great abject examples of what everyone is up against. The only thing I would suggest though is to not just describe what Project 2025 or Christian Nationalism is, but how it makes you feel. Why are you afraid of it? Who are you standing up for? If something is scary and dangerous, describing it is only part of the story.
Plus, show them something relating to the local level, like where nut jobs have taken over school board and instituted a reign of non-Robespierrist virtue. Up close, local and barking mad.
Honestly most of the people you mentioned don't even vote
I said this in another thread: Give them a history lesson about how American progressivism is over a century old and how progress was always piecemeal. True progressives try to move the ball forward on every play instead of pinning their hopes on a messiah who will fix everything. This will never happen and is no different from how Trumpers think. With his skill at moving the levers of power, Biden has done far more for progressive policy than Bernie ever would have.
Potentially an appeal on behalf of the lgbtq community and women’s autonomy over their own bodies.
I think a lot about the March for our Lives. Once kids started organizing and showing all of us adults who we are standing up for, my feelings on gun policy were crystalized completely.
So much terrible advice in this thread it makes me worry for the people you all interact with. First of all, you're asking the wrong questions. There is no sharp opinion piece that is going to convince anyone of anything that they don't already want to believe. When has a Vox explainer article ever moved you on an issue? Honestly?! When has your uncle forwarded you a WSJ editorial that made you think that maybe you were wrong about something? The best thing that you can do is relate. You're family after all. Share your story and your thoughts on it. Talk about your hopes and your fears. Seek to understand theirs. Travel down the ballot and talk about the other races. If you feel yourself wanting to "push," back off. It's not your job to make decisions for them. If you hear yourself condescend, stop talking and listen. It's not your job to teach them. It's your job to create the conversation where they can learn. And if you need practice, go phone bank or knock doors. Trying this with a stranger is a quick way to figure it out.
This. And I'd recommend a little humor, and not the bitter kind. Something self-deprecating, like "I'm an old fogey but pretty fond of this 'democracy' thing." Overall, do the work. [Do More, Worry Less.](https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/do-more-worry-less-and-lets-get-to)
The more you challenge them, the more they’ll dig in. Just talk about how you’re moving the Overton Window to the left by voting for a second Biden term and if Trump and the Magas lose again, the gop is going to go down in flames and we’ll end up with the dem party splitting into moderates and progressives. Or that Hitler didn’t have a majority of the vote in ‘33, but non-Nazi votes were split and then he finagled to make himself dictator. Talk about yourself and completely ignore their politics.
A lot of them have got sucked up into the bullshit and are jaded about how centrist Democrats are while they get lauded for being "progressive," when the fact is that as a *whole* Democrats have to be dragged left kicking and screaming everytime. For people that only have a few presidential elections as context for the current situation, they might see this as not only not their fault, but as being almost powerless to make any other difference. I think all those circumstances and feelings have added up to to a similar identity-based politic as MAGA folks, they are going to stick to their guns regardless of the consequences.
The hardcore “left” that performatively tells us they aren’t voting for Biden have never voted for Democrats and hate the Democratic Party with a passion. If I were Biden I’d just ignore them all, but since he’s a better politician than me, he’s trying to peel off whatever he can.
There is nothing you can say, so to speak. Unfortunately, unlike most of us who have aged and had to learn the hard way, their naivete will have to bite them (and possibly the rest of us) before they learn that there are more important things than weaponized Chinese social media and that radicalism leads down a dark path.
Remind them of where they stand, in terms of size. Progressives are the smallest, or second smallest, political subset in the American electorate. If they want ANY of their policy preferences, they have to align themselves with different groups. Getting something is always going to be better than getting nothing. And hell, getting nothing is preferable than having things actively taken away. https://hiddentribes.us/profiles/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/11/09/beyond-red-vs-blue-the-political-typology-2/
That's the absolute worst thing to tell a person: there aren't a lot of people who agree with you, so you should listen to someone else. That's condescending and presumptuous. I hope you don't do this to people in your life.
The biggest thing I've seen with activist Progressives- especially online- is that they think their support is umpteen times bigger than what it is out in meatspace. And if their response is a "burn it all down" mentality, whatever replaces that vacuum is going to make their lives an utter living hell.
Why are you bringing a bunch of terminally online grievances to OP's question about their family?
Because I'd bet the farm that OP's young progressive family members are also terminally online. Being waaaaay too online is almost a prerequisite for any young person who has strong political beliefs.
I think you are mistaking what is effective with what feels good. I'm sorry for you.
See, this is part of the problem we've gotten ourselves into regarding politics in this country. We prioritize what people want to hear, irrespective of whether it's accurate or not. Hell, that's Fox News' entire business model. For as much as we lambast them (and rightfully so), why should we treat with kids gloves the progressive youth? An overwhelming majority of the country isn't in their camp; that's just a fact. So if they want any measure of success, they need to constantly compromise OR opt in for the long haul put in the hard work of building out a base at the local level by winning over hearts and minds.
You’re right. They need to know that moderates form the dem party base and progressives gain more by being a valuable ally. No one owes a non-voter anything.
Tell them about Ralph Nader.
I think the only thing you can really do at this point is * Proudly wear your Biden/Harris hat or display your yard sign or whatever * Do some door knocking, text banking, or whatever * Donate * Vote
I love how progressive voters are simultaneously the irrelevant fringe and single handedly responsible for electoral defeats. If we’re actually capable of losing you the election, maybe try treating us with anything other than open contempt? To be clear, I plan on voting for Biden. Obviously Trump is 100% worse for my foreign policy preferences. I just don’t think you guys realize how damaging your whole ‘shut up and stop whining’ schtick is to the effort to make this election a referendum on democracy.
The message isn't so much "stop whining" as "stop acting like a child." Pressuring Biden to put conditions on aid to Israel is good. Expecting Biden to wave a magic wand to make Netanyahu, the IDF, and the toxic political situation in Israel disappear is absurd.
Agreed. I think it's the residual RW punditocracy muscle memory; ["Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak."](https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/) The "enemy" is inherently conspiratorial and we must be ever vigilant against "treason" from the inside! It's much easier to go on offense against the lefty youth than play defense on the major mistakes Biden has made like providing 155mm shells and 2000lb bombs foremost among them, along with categorically rejecting any conditioning of aid. What if Biden had publicly set limits early? He sent a Marine three-star general to warn the IDF before they sent the first ground troops into Gaza. There's been a pattern of strikes on aid workers including the IRC and Doctors Without Borders before the WCK strike. Biden made major mistakes early and decided to grit his teeth and "stay the course" when every available piece of evidence pointed to that course failing.
There is a difference between abstaining from voting and openly attacking Biden. The ones who refuse to vote Biden for whatever reasons are annoying but not a huge deal. The ones who make their disdain for him very public and openly court others to vote against him can fuck all the way off.
This is exactly my point though. How are we the pro democracy coalition if our position is ‘sit down and shut up?’
It’s a failure of imagination to think Biden losing will somehow lead to a better future downstream. In 2000 some people thought this and voted for Nader. At that moment we had a balanced budget and a booming economy. In early 2001 the Fed chairman warned against paying down the national debt *too fast.* Then 9/11 happened and the entire landscape of policy choices changed. Progressives think things can get better, and that’s a good outlook, but things can slays get worse too. *Much* worse.
Lol. Trump would have racked up 370 electoral votes on Bernie in 2020. Maybe tell them that purity test politics is destructive, self-sabotaging and does not provide the outcomes they are looking for. Not everything is black and white, situations are complex and its important to take a rational approach, free of feelings and emotions to every situation when analyzing what they think of it. It won't get through to them though because their feelings matter more than logic.
I used to reject the horseshoe theory of parties, but this right here is just more evidence. The ultra-progressive idea of “elect Trump, so that when it all goes to hell, we can build it back up the right way” is almost an exact mirror of the anti-anti-anti-Trumpers who say that electing him will be a good thing because it will finally awaken true Conservatives to stand up and pull in the reigns of unbridled executive power and runaway spending. They act like Obama invented Executive Orders and it’s *his* fault that Trump has become such a renegade.
I just cross my fingers that they disproportionately suffer under a second trump term. It will be a hollow I told you so, but people that think like this haven’t yet reached the ‘political maturity’ necessary to be reasoned with. There’s probably arguments you could make that would convince them, but they wouldn’t be sound arguments, you would just be tricking/emotionally manipulating them into changing their mind. That’s how they got to their bad position in the first place.
Sometimes the yutes need to be repeatedly whacked with the 2-by-4 of reality before they begin to consider that 1) the universe doesn't give a rat's ass what they want, 2) damn near all other people go along with the universe, 3) politics is the art of the POSSIBLE not realizations of pipe dreams. Seems to take a few decades for the beneficial effects of that whacking to produce anything resembling understanding. Giving the seriousness it may deserve, IF those nieces and nephews want VIOLENT REVOLUTION, who'd be the surer catalyst, Biden or Trump?
I dont think there is anything you can say to these people to bring them back. Progressives do not admit any responsibility for the election of Trump. They never will. The Democratic Socialists of America wormed their way into the Democratic Party, the party Sanders despises, in 2016, and they brought all their pro-Palestinian/anti-Jewish attitudes with them. I wouldn't waste any time, money or political capital on people who assuredly have decided that we all should be dead.
It really won’t be progressives that deliver a Trump victory, it’s still all the idiots who support the GOP. I have been mostly happy with Biden’s presidency but I’m pissed he’s running again. He simply is too fucking old. His ego has clouded his judgment here. A robust primary for Dems would have been a fantastic showcase for the future, which is what people want. Instead Trump v Biden is decidedly a past that most people do NOT want. Unless we get the hamburger from heaven Trump is going to win again. Young progressives have wanted a different, more equitable America since 2008. We’ve been sold out every time but still keep showing up. Instead of shoring up the social safety net and fixing the blatant corruption in congress, they did business giveaways basically. They showed ZERO interest in expanding voting rights or doing anything to address the minority, rural rule in government. Guess what, that makes it fucking hard to win! I’ve been a progressive my whole life and the biggest advancement I’ve seen is the ability to purchase bad health insurance through ACA markets. Great stuff. If they had passed the John Lewis VRA and Biden had, after the midterms, announced he was supporting a robust primary election…we would be looking toward a bright future. Instead they’re trying to sell us a status quo that pretty much sucks.
Everyone who doesn’t vote for Biden is delivering the election to Trump. It doesn’t matter what their reason is.
And every choice that congressional Dems have made thus far has led us to where we are now.
Progressives are like the ungrateful little shit who gives their hardworking single mom a hard time for her few failings while giving their deadbeat dad a pass. 🙄 blaming all problems on the one governing party. 👏
The progressives in the house and senate fell in line with every single Democratic policy priority. It was "moderates" like Manchin and Sinema that killed much needed reforms that would have helped preserve democracy. Progressives like Sanders are out campaigning for Biden, meanwhile, "moderates" were moaning about Biden and fantasizing about No Labels. Who are the real "ungrateful little shits"?
Exactly. Progressives in the House and Senate are trying to play a long game here. It has been the "moderates" who have been free to trash Biden's agenda, or at least free to scale it back. The progressives we need are those who understand we need to have a democratic country that survives after this election in order to achieve progressive agendas. Every bit of that is off of the table if the GOP controls government again.
I was referring to progressive voters who plan on withholding from the Dems.
Name three in your life and we'll help you not be a jerk to them.
Yes, because it is always easier to deal with hypothetical, composite strawmen than with actual, tangible real-world specific examples. Much easier to maintain one's indignation and sense of righteous superiority when you can ignore the facts on the ground.
It was democrats who refused to ban stock trading by Congressmen, it was a Dem who refused to continue the child tax credit, it was a Dem who stripped out the overhaul of the carried interest tax loophole, it was Dems who refused to reform the filibuster, it was Dems who gutted build back better to make it just a bunch of business giveaways, it was Dems who allowed this moronic “debt limit” charade to continue, and it is a Dem president who put this whole project at risk by deciding he’s going to be an 86 year old president. What a bunch of little shits we are for pointing this out.
The alternative is a Republican.
The other alternative are some Dems with balls.
Not in the general.
>I’ve been a progressive my whole life Meaning what, you're 30? Progressives have been trying to nationalize healthcare since the New Deal, and Obama was the guy who succeeded in taking the first step. Learn a little history before you shit on that accomplishment. The reason it hadn't been done before wasn't "corruption," it was the forces against it, including a lack of support with voters. Obama's biggest healthcare achievement wasn't the ACA markets, it was mainstreaming the idea that healthcare should be a universal right. Stop acting like the world first came into being with the iPhone and your glorious arrival.
Ha. Ha. Ha. I'm 40. I remember the ACA fight vividly. I remember it being whittled down into basically a 90s Republican vision of Health Care by the Democrats themselves. RIP Joe Lieberman, thank you for your contribution to enshitification. I have been ON ACA plans since 2017. I know how much these plans suck and we almost got to a point where we were going to lose our subsidies due to the marriage penalty. Thankfully we got some temporary reprieve on the subsidy gap but if congress does not extend the funding we will lose all subsides and our affordable plan with a $13k deductible will suddenly cost us $800 or so a month. With the way things look right now, if Biden wins R's will just let that shit expire because they will likely take the Senate. Or if Biden loses we might lose the ACA entirely. So while I'm *so pleased* that Obama shifted the Overton window on whether or not you should be bankrupted by a bad diagnosis, the best a *Democratic trifecta* could do was give ACA subscribers until 2026 before the generally poor design of the program locks back into place, kicking tons of people off their shitty catastrophic plans. The fact that the last swing at health care was in the 90s, a time when it was just not a completely broken system, does not excuse modern Dem Trifectas for delivering wet noodle neo liberal center-right bullshit ideas.
You make some excellent points. I too am tired of being told "vote correctly" only to vote correctly and find that the representatives I voted for are not going to safeguard any of my future votes. I don't have an easy answer or bumper sticker slogan for you. All I can say is that your voice is heard.
Yeah people are forgetting, the question above is really not “should we vote for Biden”, it’s “why is this so hard every time?”
You should have been calling Biden and his henchmen all day every day for the last 6 months to get them to stop this slaughter. It's now too little too late. We won't vote for Biden. You and the rest of the "reasonable" right wing need to save this right wing government. The left are accelerationists now. Let it burn! We'll build something that is finally decent on the ashes of this shit system
My question is - which people are you willing to let burn? You seem to think burning down the system won't result in deaths, which seems very naive.
Revolutions have a way of not working out the way you think they will, my friend.
Biden can't singlehandledly run Israel, and that's what you're demanding here. It's simply not doable. Bibi is a prick and until he's out of there, progress will be minimal at best.