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Let's kick this off with a possibly-unexpected development: Trump (kind of?) coming to Biden's defense regarding being a rapist. https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1255969521741041667
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Apr 30, 2020 22:42
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Gumball Gumption posted:That's an attack. Trump defending Biden is functionally an attack on Biden because it's Trump going "Look, see, we're not so different. Why, he's a lot like me and also has people accusing him of fake rapes. Oh what, YOU DIDN'T HEAR THAT JOE BIDEN RAPED SOMEONE?!" Sydin posted:That's actually legitimately the best way Trump could go about this whether he knows it or not: publicly and loudly conflate himself and Kav - two people Dems hate with a burning fury - with Biden. Oh, it's not going to help Biden at all, but I don't think Trump's being clever; he was the one asked about this, after all. It's probably not meant as an attack, even if it effectively is one. He has a history of doing that sort of thing, saying nice things about or defending someone he sees as similar in some way; here, the similarity is being accused of rape, which Trump thinks is unfair to him because he's like that. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Apr 30, 2020 |
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Apr 30, 2020 22:48
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Gumball Gumption posted:I'm just going to assume he's being clever and knows what he's doing. Thinking your enemy is an idiot is a great way to get surprised by your enemy. Fair enough. Either way, have there been any other high-profile instances of Biden being compared to Trump and Kavanaugh yet? It's common on the Internet, of course, but so far the only "mainstream" things I've seen have been attempts to discredit Reade, without a single comparison between how Democrats are treating Biden versus how they reacted when Republicans were accused, even if only because it's being rebutted. Which isn't too surprising, since they wouldn't want to put that out there and have people start thinking about the connection. Son of Thunderbeast posted:God damned Zeno's election. He's got a history of defending/working with predators, right? I doubt he'll do more than bring it up and accept whatever excuse Biden makes.
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Apr 30, 2020 23:20
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StratGoatCom posted:https://twitter.com/FredTJoseph/status/1255908717620576263?s=19 This feels like it has to be deliberate at this point. https://twitter.com/ASPertierra/status/1255942560549408771 Edit: https://twitter.com/HCTrudo/status/1256029593359745025 https://twitter.com/HCTrudo/status/1256029907630555137 Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 04:24 on May 1, 2020 |
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May 1, 2020 04:21
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this is, but... seriously, I just can't right now.
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relax-o-vision posted:OK, so you feel it is morally acceptable to allow neo-nazis to remain in power, got it. Thank you for your candor. Posting like this gives the game away, just so you know. Wilbur Swain posted:What a fascinating moral dilemma, to vote for the lesser of two rapists or not vote at all and abdicate all responsibility for the outcome. I wonder how long this debate will continue. Six months? Perhaps people could try to prevent it from being a match between two rapists in the first place instead of preemptively convincing themselves that it's okay to vote for a rapist and yelling at people who don't think the same. Anyone making "lesser evil" arguments at this point in time is effectively fighting in favor of this becoming an election between two rapists, which is a considerably greater evil than opposing that. relax-o-vision posted:Trump is not merely "making neo-nazis happy," he is actively enfranchising them. And I'm not arguing that Biden will somehow defeat all the nazis. My argument is that willingly allowing neo-nazis to hold power is morally indefensible on its face. What about other forms of white supremacist? If that's bad too, then your argument works against Biden, not for him. Is creating the kinds of conditions that make white supremacist recruiting and radicalization flourish, while also pushing a more decorous version of their agenda, bad as well? Biden's massively responsible for that too, and his presidency will almost certainly let him take it to new heights. Really, your line of argument here is just not a good one if you're trying to support Biden, because once you look at it at all beyond the surface level it becomes blatantly obvious that Biden is hugely bad on that front too, and it's more or less the same as, "Well Biden's less of a rapist so he's better than Trump, and thus not voting for him is tantamount to supporting rapists".
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May 2, 2020 06:57
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nivdes posted:so on one hand people are upset that Biden "sent people to their deaths", i.e. to vote, and on the other people are upset that the New York primary was cancelled, presumably to avoid sending people to their deaths You're being blatantly disingenuous, or are amazingly ignorant of what actually happened despite how certain you seem to be. New York only canceled the presidential primary, none of the other primaries, and people can vote by mail there anyway. In Wisconsin (and other states) the Biden campaign outright lied about what the CDC said was safe to encourage people to vote and had surrogates accusing the Sanders campaign of voter suppression for pointing this out, along with opposing any efforts to delay the primaries in general. Being pissed about both of these things at once is not at all contradictory; people have the right to vote and should be able to do so safely. Canceling a primary outright in a state that does have mail-in voting and encouraging people to vote in-person during a pandemic while opposing efforts to delay the primaries both go against this principle. Edit: VVV Yeah, but if you don't give more effort there's a good chance you'll be the one probated, despite responding to a blatant troll who's putting out even less effort, and will continue to do so unpunished. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 23:12 on May 2, 2020 |
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May 2, 2020 22:47
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fool of sound posted:Reminder that you are expected to put forward bare minimum effort on posts in this thread. Posting single line spam is going to get your probated regardless of if it's correct. If you have a problem with that, post in CSPAM instead, that's what it's for. Roland Jones posted:Edit: VVV Yeah, but if you don't give more effort there's a good chance you'll be the one probated, despite responding to a blatant troll who's putting out even less effort, and will continue to do so unpunished. Called it. So, nivdes is going to be allowed to keep making one-to-two sentence posts that have no basis in reality and are clearly meant to make people mad, ignore any responses that address how stupid they are, and then post about how people are just sticking their heads in the sand and refusing to acknowledge reality? Because it's been going on unabated for a while.
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May 3, 2020 01:32
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rscott posted:Liberal ideology (which cannot be divorced from capitalism) is firmly tethered to the ideals of Locke and Kant at its core and both were explicit Christians so saying Liberalism and Christianity are antithetical to each other doesn't make much sense to me Jesus was pretty clear that rich people don't get into Heaven and that you should give all your wealth to the poor, which would be an ineffective way of doing capitalism.
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May 5, 2020 01:43
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Scientist Al Gore posted:If politics is a game, it's a game of inches. You move forward a little bit, you move backwards a little bit. Rarely, you get some super cool opportunities like the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s but even then that was especially brutal, extremely risky and despite a great outcome the success was paid in blood. I'm amazed that no one has quoted the Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to this already, but I guess that means I get to. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr posted:I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. Though I suppose there's another relevant quote from that time period, one that even talks about "inches" and progress: Malcolm X posted:If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there. Your outlook expressed in the quoted post is something that was recognized back in the Civil Rights Movement, as one of the biggest problems it faced. That you're citing that same movement in defense of the kind of thought that stymied them then and continues to thwart progress now is some amazing irony. TL;DR:
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May 5, 2020 05:56
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How are u posted:I don't like what they did in NY and hopefully the voters hold them accountable down the line. I don't think it is some kind of definitive proof you can't work within the system, just means you gotta go from the bottom up and build power so we're the ones in control. Like I have been saying. How? How do you "work from the bottom-up within the system" when the system can and will shut down any means you can use to affect it if it feels remotely threatened? You're saying you want voters to hold people responsible for those people going so far as to cancel votes, as if massive fuckery isn't the inevitable response there too. New York already has their "moderate" Democrats working with Republicans to stifle any attempts at good things. Really, you keep citing the "Virginia model" but that just proves the point people are making in this thread about the Democratic Party and leftists; a lot of the good happening in Virginia has been pushed by Lee Carter, an actual (kind of) socialist, not a moderate. The moderates also refused to help Carter in his first campaign, which makes him winning anyway and taking out one of the most powerful Republicans in the state that much more amazing. Since he won, meanwhile, they've shot down a lot of the good things he's tried to push for, and watered down much of the rest, then took credit for what they allowed through despite the fact that they'd have never tried them at all if he wasn't there. And they've been working against him, including trying to primary him and replace him with a former Republican, who definitely wouldn't have been agitating for all the good things Carter's been pushing if he had won in 2019 instead. Leftists should get involved in local politics anyway, but trying to use Virginia as a positive example of incremental, moderate progress that proves centrists in the party right, rather than Democrats working to crush the left at the state and local levels as well as national and only allowing moderate, often-insufficient reforms that mostly look good because they're following the outright maliciousness of Republicans through, is ridiculous. It's a reminder that Democrats are awful too and need to be fought tooth and nail because they will betray the left, not that they're actually good. It's definitely not an argument in favor of Joe Biden, the man who killed #MeToo. Applying "the Virginia model" to climate change instead of pushing for something like the Green New Deal (something Biden has lied about repeatedly, claiming that scientists say it's impossible rather than something they've said is necessary and had input on) gets us a climate apocalypse just as surely as Trump does, just within a different timeframe. (It also actually fits stuff like how AOC, Ilhan Omar, and so on have been treated by Dems in the House; they've also been brought out for good publicity when convenient, then suppressed and attacked harder than Republicans by their own party at other times, like how Omar received harsher criticism from Dems than Steve loving King. But that's a tangent.) I live in California, where Democrats have a supermajority in both state houses under a Democratic governor. We aren't seeing major changes the way Virginia is here; some good things have happened, but also some pretty bad ones, and the attempt at a state-level universal healthcare system was killed by Democrats. We've still completely failed to do anything meaningful about PG&E murdering hundreds of people, displacing thousands, and destroying entire towns in the name of profit. Our governor tried to include an exemption for Disneyland in the lockdown, before Disneyland itself said "that's stupid, we're shutting down". What would "the Virginia model" look like here, when moderate Democrats already have full power? Or are we an example of it working too because relative to the rest of this hell-country we're still generally better off, despite the major and obvious problems we face that moderates refuse to address? Those things don't seem to be counted as cons in Virginia, so should I just be happy it could be worse? Xombie posted:They already did this with Bill Clinton. Honestly the only exception so far has been Al Franken, and they would have ignored that too if it weren't right in the middle of the height of the #MeToo movement. Xombie posted:Trump put a rapist on the Supreme Court after he was proven to be a rapist on national TV. Who is likely about to overturn Roe v. Wade. This is normalizing rape. You're trying to argue why one rapist should be acceptable, as other rapists are worse, and arguing that he's not out of the ordinary for the party anyway. You are literally arguing that rape is normal, as a defense of Biden. You basically already admitted several times over that you're only posting in this thread to start poo poo and have said several gross and/or stupid things, but this is particularly repulsive. Venomous posted:It bears repeating that James Callaghan-esque social democracy would be centrist if the Overton Window hadn't shifted so far to the right over the past 45 years or so The Democratic Party in the US is to the right of most conservative parties in other countries, barring certain social views. But still willing to tolerate regressiveness there even if it doesn't openly champion it. Phone posted:Why would you trust anything a documented plagiarist and liar tells you? I thought it was concluded that the man was not actually at fault there? Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 23:56 on May 5, 2020 |
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May 5, 2020 23:51
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KingNastidon posted:No, I was originally disagreeing with Gumball because I don't think Biden voters are voting for Biden because they want the left to gently caress off. They just prefer a different candidate and no one is telling anyone to gently caress off or they aren't needed. "Go vote for Trump" in response to an immigration activist bringing up his concerns about the massive amounts of deportations carried out under Obama and Biden is pretty much as close to "gently caress off" as you can get without just outright saying it. He literally told someone who questioned him to go away and vote for someone else. He's done this multiple times, though the above is probably the most obviously-heinous and malicious example.
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May 5, 2020 23:59
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Just like with the Civil Rights Movement, you are incredibly selective in which parts of which posts you acknowledge, wow. Like leaving out the parts of my post that explain that your views expressed in this thread were literally one of the biggest problems that the Civil Rights Movement faced. Anyway, hey, New York got forced to uncancel the Democratic primary. https://twitter.com/lsarsour/status/1257810700715659268
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May 6, 2020 00:34
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KingNastidon posted:And once you've vanquished the moderate liberals where will their home be? Not economically left enough for the new Democrats, too socially left for Republicans. Do you not consider their plight and lack of home or is it all about me, me, me? They want people to go without literal, actual homes, so I'm not that concerned about them not having a political home, personally. Having a political party that caters to your specific, regressive and highly-damaging views is not a necessity. Scientist Al Gore posted:There's a ton going on in this thread and I feel with my last effort post I addressed the majority of issues represented as many folks are essentially discussing the same topic or issue. If there's something you think I missed, feel free to bring it up as I'd be happy to address it. Anything I said, perhaps. Or at least why you're right and the quotes I posted are wrong. Also the post(s) that called you out on how disrespectful your summary of the Civil Rights Movement was. You're ignoring how you seem to have legitimately pissed off some people with that and are instead trying to play the victim to those "mean goons".
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May 6, 2020 00:45
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Diet-capitalism, aka, "Human rights must be affordable (but you still have to pay for them and should die if you can't)": https://twitter.com/TheDemocrats/status/1257504540460490752
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May 6, 2020 00:52
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Scientist Al Gore posted:No doubt, but you should still join and try to participate. Pretty much all in the upper-right quadrant of the upper-right quadrant. Yinlock posted:also yeah FDR wasn't the greatest himself, he was just smart enough to know that he was about to have a literal class war on his hands if the rich weren't strong-armed into doing the right thing for once in their lives And they wanted to kill him for it. Unrelated, was this posted here already? Because wow. https://twitter.com/eugene_scott/status/1257434043815206914
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May 6, 2020 01:51
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Doctor Jeep posted:vote for joe so he can finish the job barack started: It's darkly ironic that the main thing that kept Obama from destroying the social safety net and plunging us into an even more right-wing hellscape was Republicans being so adamantly against working with him that they wouldn't let him give them everything they wanted.
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May 6, 2020 02:03
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Doctor Jeep posted:the same thing was gonna happen during slick willy's second term, a grand bargain with republicans, and then the lewinsky scandal happened Biden literally does not want the Republicans to lose the 2020 election, which makes all the "Vote Biden or you're helping Republicans" takes doubly ironic. quote:Democratic front-runner Joe Biden surely has an abundant list of concerns as he chases down the nomination: An ascendant small-town mayor at the top of the polls in Iowa, an underrated Sanders campaign, and the GOP plan to stymie the impeachment process with allegations of Biden family corruption could be chief among them. But on Friday, as part of his eight-day No Malarkey tour of Iowa, the former vice-president expressed an unexpected 2020 anxiety. Literally afraid of the GOP facing consequences for their actions and telling Republican voters to otherwise stay Republican even if they vote for him. This is the guy people insist will get a Democratic majority and do good things, the one who is campaigning on going back to the days when Republicans blocked everything the Democratic president did and is doing everything in his power to make sure it ends up that way again. The downballot will probably be bad for Dems even if he wins if he keeps this rhetoric going forward. Also, if we're going to link political quizzes here, at least share one that isn't well-known as awful, yeah. Personally I kind of like this one the most of the ones I've seen so far. It even generates you a little flag based on your results, which is a neat touch. Though the translation is a bit rough in some places. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 02:25 on May 6, 2020 |
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May 6, 2020 02:20
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Gumball Gumption posted:I took the quiz and I'm literally in the bottom left corner. Can anyone who actually thinks this is accurate explain to me how my answers decide where I am on the chart? Your answers add or subtract to your score on either axis, with "Strongly Agree/Disagree" having a larger effect than merely "Agree/Disagree". Getting an "extreme" result on it is really just a result of being consistent in your beliefs, even if they're fairly mild for the most part.
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May 6, 2020 02:34
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Gumball Gumption posted:Huh interesting. And I can see how those values are decided and how the weighting works? Through experimentation and looking at the url for your results (since the final score numbers are there), you could probably figure it out. I don't know if they have the actual calculations available for viewing anywhere, though. But I'm pretty sure it's what was already said, yeah. Also, just retook that test I linked earlier, for the heck of it, and my results are still basically the same as they've always been:  For how this one works, meanwhile, I think your answers just add to your score for a particular scale, strong more than somewhat, with a few questions in it that instead give an "additional characteristic" like Monarchism or Anarchism if you answer them in the affirmative. Thus my 100% results up there come from answering every relevant question strongly in the direction of that scale; most people's results would probably be more like my Ecology-Productivism scale, with bigger empty spaces, I imagine. Neither is particularly scientific, but I like the greater detail and presentation of this one more at least. yronic heroism posted:Affordability is based on means. If someone has no means, they can afford zero, which Democratic plans actually recognize and address. Through means-testing and tax credits and other measures that punish the poor, force them (deeper) into debt they won't be able to pay off, and/or keep them from getting the aid they need anyway. "Affordable" being part of it is a problem even if you actually have ways for people who can't afford anything to still get it, because you're still making some amount of people who are already in financially-unstable positions have to weigh their health against their wallets.
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May 6, 2020 02:57
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Gumball Gumption posted:The real political compass is if your first reaction to it is "But how does it come to this answer?" or "Oh wow you answer questions and then it tells you your politics!" I mostly have fun sharing the quizzes with not-very-politically-engaged friends, then after seeing their (almost inevitably very mild/middling) results sharing mine and seeing how they react to me being about as extreme as the quiz will let me be. Though I also spent a decent amount of time trying to figure out how PolitiScales works and generates its flags one night, which was fun, and also revealed that they have the best result if you answer neutral or undecided to everything:  yronic heroism posted:Then make the case for your program being better for the greatest number. Nobody in the real world gives a poo poo that anyone’s plan uses the word “affordable.” Nobody outside of left Twitter is going to quiver when you say “tax credits.” punishedkissinger posted:yeah, voters are actually pretty good at picking up on this bullshit, which is why Biden has a historically low level of enthusiasm. Yeah, if anyone is paying any attention at all, when they see stuff like the endless stream of asterisks and qualifications to that one Harris plan they realize that it's hopeless or won't actually help them. Besides, I already made my case in the post you replied to: Healthcare being something you have to pay for guarantees that some people who need it will go without due to financial difficulty and thus puts a price on not-dying. If we acknowledge that healthcare is a human right, as the Democrats are pretending to do, then putting a price on it is fundamentally unjust. This is not hard to understand. PerniciousKnid posted:I got Justice * Socialism * Humanity but my flag was extremely ugly. Yeah, sadly due to the colors being related to your dominant scores it's hard to get a good-looking flag if your politics aren't morally reprehensible; sometime last year I answered every question with the opposite of what I actually believed just to see what it'd give me, and the flag was much nicer, if fairly plain. 
Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 03:47 on May 6, 2020 |
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May 6, 2020 03:40
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Dixon Chisholm posted:I hope you don't. It's fun to just look at where they put everyone from election to election; in 2008 they actually put Biden closer to the center than Obama:  Then in 2012, well, that's actually arguably more accurate, though Rand Paul not being authoritarian is buying into his propaganda rather than looking at what he actually says and does.  2016, they put Hillary to the right of Trump, though much less authoritarian than him.  And now, for the most recent 2020 one, they've got Biden far right finally, but are all over the place with a lot of others, including suggesting that Gabbard was as far left and less authoritarian than Bernie, which is hilarious.  Basically, it's all over the place and seemingly arbitrary, pretty much only good for showing to people who aren't really engaged to try to get the idea in their head that US politics are far, far to the right of the rest of the world and actually confined to a very narrow spectrum, and maybe hoping that the absurd test results get them to start thinking "hey, maybe I don't fit into these either of parties after all". (Though if they actually end up right-wing and/or authoritarian on this, uh, maybe stop hanging out with them, because they probably put some worrisome answers in there.) Cpt_Obvious posted:Rand writes entire books about big, strong, rapey super men who are exalted above the stupid rabble and is somehow not considered authoritarian. Rand's entire image is one contrary to what she actually professed, and how she lived her own life ironically enough; by her own standards she was one of the subhuman parasites she constantly railed against, though she'd have never admitted it. Really though her work is nonsense and it's both hilarious and frightening that a significant chunk of the political spectrum worships books whose protagonists were based on a real serial killer the author was completely obsessed with and saw as the ideal human being. (Edit: Seriously, she has letters and stuff describing the man the exact same way she does her ubermensch protagonists, it's kind of horrifying.) If she were born a few decades later she'd have been writing edgy Internet smut or something instead, and probably been much happier for it. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 04:12 on May 6, 2020 |
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May 6, 2020 04:01
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https://twitter.com/NoraReed/status/1257869379779223552 https://twitter.com/NoraReed/status/1257870430255239169 VitalSigns posted:Her idealistic utopia involved the heroes sabotaging all the means of production to genocide everyone except the bourgeoisie, who lived in a magical valley and invented automated factories to replace all the lower classes. Seriously, if people aren't familiar with how Ayn Rand was literally in love with a serial killer and literally described him as an "ideal man" and described him in the same terms she later used to describe the "heroes" of her novels, read up on it. [Warning, contains graphic descriptions of said killer's activities.] quote:The best way to get to the bottom of Ayn Rand's beliefs is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation — Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street — on him.
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May 6, 2020 04:49
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Scooter_McCabe posted:https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/personality-quiz/#result-charts According to this quiz I am a human disaster, so I am inclined to believe it is accurate.
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May 6, 2020 06:00
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Joe Biden and the Democrats have killed #MeToo. And they might be rewarded with the presidency for it. https://twitter.com/BenSpielberg/status/1258066189307109376 The day Bernie suspended his campaign I went online and changed my voter registration to no longer be a member of the Democratic Party, and this is just cementing my resolve against reversing that decision.
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May 6, 2020 19:31
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-Blackadder- posted:I haven't really been following politics for the last few years so I'm more asking a question than making any argument, but I remember we weren't hilary fans four years ago either, I was personally not big on her racism. Assuming you're being genuine, the issue is that the Democrats moving right is what's gotten us into the catastrophically bad situation we're in right now; Democrats are nearly identical to Republicans economically and the parties use social issues as their wedge, except Dems will also allow socially-conservative people power in the party too, so things stay terrible on that front as well until the issue is forced and progress is agonizingly slow and prone to massive setbacks. This is not supposition, these are facts. It is also a fact that Democrats view the left, along with marginalized groups, as their hostages effectively, since the Republicans are worse and such an active threat that there's no one else to vote for besides the Dems. This allows them to keep compromising rightward in hopes of expanding their base, becoming more and more like the same people they use to terrify their base into submission. This effectively guarantees that things can only ever get worse. Thus, the logic is that, if the left and such don't vote for the Dems, combined with how Republican voters are just going to vote for the real Republican rather than a Democrat pretending to be one (or even a Republican with a D next to their name) and "swing voters" essentially being a myth with how few there actually are, it will demonstrate to the Democrats that they cannot win if they keep moving right and force them to either actually do good things or die out. The problem is that the Democrats are immune to logic here, because winning is not their primary goal; the people funding them benefit more from right-wing policy, and liberalism only compromises right, not left. Their real jobs, as far as it matters, require them to ignore everything stated above, so they will never, ever come to the conclusion that it's their fault they lost, and will always respond by moving even further right, while blaming the left for their losses and using it as an excuse to write them off, even if this is blatantly contradictory to reality; we saw this in 2016, after all, where more Bernie voters supported Hillary than Hillary supporters supported Obama in 2008 (hell, Hillary's 2008 campaign radicalized enough of her supporters through the racist propaganda it spread that they became a proto-alt-right and were among some of Trump's loudest supporters in 2016), and her loss mostly came down to lovely campaigning and failing to turn out her own base, among other things. Despite this, for the past four years "Bernie Bros" have been their punching bag they blame for their loss, and they're already preemptively doing the same for 2020 as well. Which makes sense, from a completely amoral perspective; they know that Bernie voters did support them despite all the abuse hurled their way, as the numbers show, so it's "safe" to continue doing so rather than accepting the blame for their faults. This strategy doesn't even have to change if left-leaning people do abandon them; the excuses they were already going to use just gain a grain of truth. Of course, this reality is not a particularly motivating reason to continue supporting the Democrats. One could even reasonably argue that it's immoral to do so, because they bear just as much, if not more, responsibility for the state our country is in now as the Republicans, and voting for them just enables them to continue exploiting people, making it more important to not support them. Of course, from there people start getting into arguments of what to do next, whether it's possible to do it, and what would actually even happen if that were achieved, and no one on either side is going to be convinced of the other because people who want to keep voting for the Democrats anyway will insist that this strategy would lead to nothing but complete Republican control, people on the other side will point out that staying the course effectively guarantees that things keep getting worse and leads to climate apocalypse anyway so we may as well try to do something that has a chance of replacing the ossified Democratic leadership with people who might not be terrible, both sides draw on counterfactuals to prove that their future is the one that will happen, the former group calls the latter Republicans and emphasizes how much they don't like Biden either and definitely aren't rape apologists even as they try to shame the latter into voting for him despite him being a rapist, and so on until a different topic gets the thread's attention for a while.
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May 6, 2020 20:10
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Gumball Gumption posted:I can earnestly say that I happily voted Hilary even though I supported Bernie. I didn't really like her policies but she wasn't Trump. Same here, except I still feel bad for voting for Hillary because I live in California so the compromise wasn't even necessary, it only served to run up the numbers that wound up not mattering because she blew off important swing states. So gently caress it, I basically have a free pass to vote for whoever I want at the top of the ticket, so I'm definitely not putting a segregationist and rapist there; I could get my whole county to vote third-party and it wouldn't come close to making the state go anything but blue. (Hell, the whole county could vote Trump and the state would still be solidly blue and not give Trump a single electoral vote, but obviously that's not an outcome I'd enjoy either even it's effectively meaningless.) At this point, assuming Biden doesn't drop dead before he's even named a VP and we're thus stuck with either him or whatever ghoul he has as a running mate against Trump, then the best possible outcome is probably something like maximum chaos, Trump gets a plurality of the popular vote but loses the electoral college and we see him and the GOP absolutely lose it and possibly finally destroy that thing, along with one or more third parties getting >5% of the vote and thus become eligible for public funding. If nothing else, that latter bit would be nice, and since, as above, I live in one of the safest of safe blue states, I think the best use of my presidential vote is working towards that goal rather than giving a racist child molester and sexual predator another +1; I have absolutely no influence on whether he wins or loses the election, even compared to the average voter. (And in the extremely unlikely scenario that Biden actually does lose California, then that'd just be prove of what an unspeakably awful candidate he is.)
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May 6, 2020 20:34
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Mellow Seas posted:Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, Democrats - meaning, people who are called "liberals" in the US popular nomenclature - are inherently uncertain people who love to hedge their bets, and tend to see the world in shades of gray. And voting for Biden doesn't have to mean that you like him; voting for the lesser evil is a very common and generally accepted way of voting. Most people vote that way, really. This melodramatic "I CAN'T HAVE THAT VOTE ON MY SOUL" poo poo is just not how I or most people think about voting. But people can vote however and for whomever they want, for whatever reason they want. Voting for the lesser evil being common and accepted is why we have a rapist running against another rapist and people are making excuses for rape and sending death threats to a rape victim and her daughter; we accepted the "lesser evil" and things just got more and more evil, and now having basic human decency is seen as supporting the greater evil. RBA Starblade posted:This would be interesting but I can't think of a way it happens it doesn't lead to them doing so and Trump not leaving office or rewriting some other rules so the third party part doesn't happen, which I guess just makes it even more maximum chaos. If the Republicans actually did a coup because the electoral college overriding the popular vote went against them for once, I'm pretty sure that would outright destroy the country, or at least cause massive riots everywhere. I could see Trump wanting to do that, but I don't think it'd succeed, in large part because the Republicans who'd need to support him would probably be afraid of getting murdered, along with the military and such not supporting it enough to actually back up a coup. Any "rules rewriting" other than something like the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would require a constitutional amendment, and either route would only be able to take effect after the election's settled; the death of the electoral college would be almost certain, I think, but it would only affect future elections. Or maybe I'm too optimistic and the whole country would suddenly accept that only the popular vote matters this time. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 20:53 on May 6, 2020 |
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May 6, 2020 20:40
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Xombie posted:Compared to Hillary? They absolutely will. Hillary Clinton was the bogeyman of the GOP for years. I mean, when he was vice president they promised that the president would never, ever fill the open Supreme Court seat and that any Democratic replacement wouldn't either, even if it meant leaving the seat empty for four years, so if that's the kind of "going easy" Biden can look forward to...
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May 6, 2020 20:59
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RBA Starblade posted:Maybe they don't want more voters "choking to death on their own blood". They're moving to vote-by-mail. They're not canceling any of the other primaries, just the presidential one. It's 100% an attempt to suppress the vote, nothing more, and pretending otherwise just proves that you're not being genuine. Though those quotation marks, which I assume represent you quoting someone's criticism of Biden's campaign telling people in other states to go vote in-person in the primaries and lying about what the CDC recommended, imply that as well and strongly suggest you're just being spiteful here.
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May 6, 2020 21:44
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On the topic of the Biden campaign and its surrogates lying constantly: https://twitter.com/HRC/status/1258021194093047808 https://twitter.com/IAmKevinBates/status/1258119949979131905 https://twitter.com/SimplyStapha/status/1258115936575463425
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May 6, 2020 22:11
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Sharkie posted:Biden literally wanted to chemically induce irreversible anhedonia into black children in order to prevent drug use. He literally tried to make that a thing. If "blaming anyone for drug addiction" is a "super low blow," then what do you call Biden's plan? Mind posting a link on this? I've been trying to find it again (I have read it before thanks to a thread here) but can't, and I really wish I could because it's such an amazing example of how awful Biden is.
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May 6, 2020 23:17
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Mellow Seas posted:Like three decades ago there was a report of some “vaccine” for drug addiction and Biden said it was an interesting idea. He didn’t know the vaccine was basically chemical lobotomy. He was being stupid. But because some people like to abuse framing to the point of mendacity, yeah, he wanted to induce permanent anhedonia in every black kid, sure. Could you back this up? I've been looking for more information on this but so far looking up stuff related to Joe Biden's drug stances in 1989 just turns up things like him saying that Bush's War on Drugs plan doesn't go far enough and needs more police, prosecutors, and prisons, and that he's against the legalization or decriminalization of any drug. Extremely awful, but also not about the proposed "vaccine". So far the only published piece of anything I've seen mentioning it is that Jacobin article, and your post is the first time I've seen it put that particular way and contradicts the claim that he was pushing the authorities to look into it. Scientist Al Gore posted:There isn't one. The objective measure is whatever's least bad. This is how normalization works. We're now facing an election between two rapists; from this point forward, "not a rapist" is not a requirement in a candidate, but a luxury. Anything not as bad as rape but still awful can also be dismissed, since, hey, at least it's not rape. If Biden does win, then whoever he's up against in 2024 (assuming he doesn't resign or die before that) will have the moral high ground unless they're a true monster. It's also established quite firmly that victims can't come forward and expect to be heard, because the abuser's allies and supporters will crush them, and the only person who will face consequences is the victim. (And their family, apparently.) "Believe Women" has been proven to be conditional, so who's going to come forward now? Both parties have shown that they will mercilessly crush anyone who accuses one of their members and protect the abuser, which not only intimidates victims into silence but gives predators the go-ahead to continue their abuse. Win or lose, what has happened in this campaign is a catastrophe. Mellow Seas has been complaining about hyperbole, but I think that calling this the death of #MeToo is pretty fair; only 30% of the Democratic Party's members think that Biden should resign if Reade's accusations against him are proven. That's awful for a party that claims to care about this sort of thing. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 00:41 on May 7, 2020 |
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May 7, 2020 00:27
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Scientist Al Gore posted:Trump is actively destroying the planet to the extent that Oil and Gas companies disagree with him and don't even want it. That's much worse, no? Biden will do that too. Obama was catastrophically bad on this front and Biden will at best go back to that, more likely be far worse. "Carbon-free by 2050" (how the hell is he going to guarantee that when he won't govern past 2028, or 2024 if he keeps to his pledge of a single term?) means the destruction of the planet just as surely as Trump does, and Biden has a lot of fossil fuel executives on his team, suggesting that even the above is nothing but another lie of his. "Better" here doesn't mean "good" or even "halfway decent"; we're still dead either way. Scientist Al Gore posted:They're putting their "revolution" above the livelihood of others. I see that mask slipping.
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May 7, 2020 00:53
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Scientist Al Gore posted:Really? Weird, how come not a single other Democratic candidate has called him out on such? Why have the leading climate scientists and other environmental groups supported him? It's true, you liar. Climate scientists say we have less than a decade to make major changes, if that: quote:Do you remember the good old days when we had "12 years to save the planet"? Biden's plan is insufficient and means irreparable harm to the planet, at best. He won't even pledge to 45% by 2030. He won't even ban fracking. Which is why climate scientists and advocates aren't actually that excited for him. COVID-19 posted:I guess this is the best we could do to fight against Trump. Vote Blue No Matter Who Thank you for this; still somewhat light on details, but it makes it clear that Biden was pushing for this, and even fighting pharmaceutical companies on it, rather than just "having heard of it and thought it sounded interesting". Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 01:19 on May 7, 2020 |
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May 7, 2020 01:09
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How are u posted:Are the climate scientists and climate activists saying we should re-elect Donald Trump? That's literally the only other option, if Biden becomes the nominee. I will start taking you seriously on climate when your solution stops being "thus, we need to re-elect Donald Trump because he will ultimately be better on climate" because that is clearly 100% false and nobody but the jilted internet left is arguing it. Well, dang, I had started to think you were actually engaging reasonably but now you're busy building yourself opponents out of straw, rather than addressing a single thing I actually loving said. Meanwhile Scientist Al Gore already went mask-off with that "revolution" post, among other things, and is still being dishonest about the science, so it's starting to look like this is all a waste of time. Enjoy voting in favor of rape and a slightly prolonged climate armageddon, I guess.
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May 7, 2020 01:37
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How are u posted:If Biden and Trump are my two choices then I will choose Biden because his administration will be better for the climate than Donald Trump. That's the entirety of the math. Biden's climate platform is deeply disappointing, but it exists. It is unarguably better than the alternative. I've already said in this thread, today, that I think Trump losing the electoral college, i.e. Biden winning it and thus the presidency, is part of what's probably the best plausible outcome if he's the nominee. I also think that caving to him now is stupid and defeatist and both tactically and morally wrong, and that he absolutely should not be accepted as the nominee at this point in time, because he is not; there's still time to replace him, despite the Democrats engaging in obvious bullshit like shutting down only the presidential primary in New York after they're already moving to vote-by-mail. There is no damage that can be done to Biden now that wouldn't be done later anyway. Talking about him being a rapist? The media will be all over that the moment they're sure he's the nominee. Talking about his massive history of over-the-top racism? It's already known and is only going to be brought up more and more over time. Pointing out how utterly insufficient his climate plan is and how he's letting oil companies lead us into an early grave? Again, it's going to happen either way, and in that case the earlier and more it's hammered on the greater the (slight) chance of him being forced to improve on that. Republicans aren't going to ignore any weapon they can use against Biden; we cannot hurt him in a way that he won't be eventually regardless of our actions. It's best to go full-bore on what a shitbag he is now, since that's the most likely way to get him replaced. Hell, even if you're already planning to vote for him, you should stop trying to shame and shut up his critics and get them to pledge to him before the primaries are even over; if his issues are addressed now, then his campaign can work to either fix them or at least make defenses against them so that they can better address them in the general when Republicans inevitably deploy them against him and his campaign is blindsided by something completely loving obvious and in the public record (though they're such trash this'll probably happen anyway). He's already a terrible candidate, and he'll be an even worse one the longer his obvious flaws go unaddressed, because he will not make it through the election without them coming up sooner or later. All the cowardice and rape-apologism his defenders are displaying, in this thread, on Twitter, and on the actual news, will accomplish is making a lovely, harmful outcome that much more likely, whether in the form of Trump's reelection or the election of a Biden who had all his worst traits and policies accepted and defended and thus is the worst Biden he could possibly be, which is pretty loving bad because Joe Biden is a terrible human being whose strings are being pulled by other terrible people, plus collateral damage like how #MeToo's been dealt a deathblow by all this. Don't accept Joe Biden. Don't apologize for his lies, his racism, his warmongering, his rape, his open molestation of children, his refusal to promise a plan with the slightest chance of saving the planet (and even if it does is guaranteed to lead to a massive refugee crisis that, judging from his history of open racism and being worse on immigration than Henry Kissinger, combined with the actions of the Obama administration, he is certain to handle in an unspeakably cruel manner), or any other awful aspect of him. Fight to make them throw his rear end out. Turn the tables on the Dems; instead of letting them cow you into submission with the threat of the Republicans (who they actively try to be like anyway), make them think that you're willing to sink the ship if you aren't listened to, even if you aren't; even if you think there's no chance of them actually getting rid of Biden, there's no reason to just lie down and accept him already because there will not be a single concession made on healthcare, the climate, basic human decency, or whatever, unless you give the Democrats a reason to make them. If you are defending Biden now, months before the convention, you are a fool, a coward, a conservative, or some combination thereof, and are actively working to make the future worse whether you realize it or not. Do not accept Joe Biden. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 02:21 on May 7, 2020 |
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May 7, 2020 02:16
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Scientist Al Gore posted:Funny how every climate scientist thinks your completely absolutely wrong. They don't, you're lying, again. It's outright pathetic now; your own links show that Biden's climate plan does not meet the minimum requirements scientists have given and they're only endorsing him because his opponent outright denies the existence of climate change, and yet you're still sticking your fingers in your ears to pretend that Biden is actually good instead of woefully insufficient. And that's not even getting into how climate change is going to cause the worst refugee crises the world has ever seen; given that Biden is worse than Henry loving Kissinger when it comes to helping refugees fleeing crises the USA creates, he's going to cause the suffering and death of millions and do nothing to relieve it. You keep going well beyond arguing that Biden is the lesser evil and getting into insisting that he's not evil at all, lying and denying reality to try to pretend that you aren't voting for a monster. but you aren't fooling anyone except possibly yourself. Cpt_Obvious posted:I haven't really been paying attention. What exactly has been going on in Virginia other than making it easier to get Democrats elected? Democrats got control over the entire state legislature and have been passing some decent-to-good laws. Some people keep pointing to this as proof that leftists need to shut up and accept incremental reform, conveniently ignoring that a lot of that good stuff is only happening thanks to the actual leftist that was elected there despite the state party not helping him, and who's been dealing with the moderates watering down or killing his proposals as well as trying to primary him with a corrupt former Republican even as they take credit for the good things of his they do allow to pass. They're yet to answer how I can apply the "Virginia model" to states like my own, California, where Democrats have a supermajority in both state houses and the governorship and are still failing miserably in many regards, such as holding PG&E accountable for murdering hundreds of people and destroying entire towns. Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 03:37 on May 7, 2020 |
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May 7, 2020 03:32
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Mellow Seas posted:The US had a massive military presence in Iraq for over a decade and only killed like 3% of the people there, I think if their goal was "genocide" they did a poo poo job of it. "Genocide" means something and it doesn't mean "shittily-executed war against people of a different ethnicity". What the gently caress is wrong with you. Holy poo poo, you deserve Biden as your candidate because you're also a monster. Araenna posted:maybe one day someone will answer my questions Your questions are inconvenient to their narrative, and because the people you are addressing are so monumentally lovely they attract plenty of other posts, many of which are easier to answer with their empty platitudes and cliches and don't require directly facing the contradictions and flaws in their worldview. Anyway, again, defending Biden now is stupid even, if not especially, if you're "pro"-Biden and already plan to vote for him in November because Trump is worse etc etc. Even his biggest defenders in this thread admit that he's a monumentally terrible candidate, and his flaws are so obvious that, if we're talking about them, then Republicans will be able to use them against him in the general. From a genuinely pragmatic perspective, rather than the emotional gutfeel of liberals who convince themselves that doing terrible things is "pragmatic", it is better to get this in the open now and either address it, fix it, come up with a defense for it, or at least get it into the public consciousness so it can't be an October surprise, the way Trump weathered the "pussy" tape after a couple weeks of damage but Comey's letter right before the election was probably the final blow to Clinton's campaign. People who want Biden out and people who want Biden to win both should want to criticize him as much as possible now, whether to get him replaced or to force him to become a better candidate respectively. Following from that: Revelation 2-13 posted:You could just say that you think trump is good and cool and worth your vote on his own merits. You don't have to go this roundabout way over to pretending it's a protest vote or whatever. Why are you putting so much effort into ensuring Trump's victory is as easy as possible? Not only are you preventing Biden's flaws from being addressed and making him an easier target for Trump in the general, but you're doing the same thing Biden himself does of telling people who don't want to vote Trump, and have said as much, to vote for him, because of your sheer disdain for people disagreeing with you and having their own opinions. Are you an accelerationist? A Russian asset? Or just someone so full of turmoil you have to project your guilt over going all-out in support of a rapist who will let the planet die onto others to make yourself feel better, despite this being counterproductive to your supposed goals? Why do you want Trump to win so badly? Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 19:46 on May 7, 2020 |
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May 7, 2020 19:29
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RBA Starblade posted:Well, that and the argument that if Trump wins we have a chance to stop climate armageddon that won't happen if Biden wins instead. Now, this is not my reason for not voting Biden (again, California, etc), but there is a pretty sound logic here if you don't trust Biden to do anything good for the climate and at best go back to Obama's "let oil pipelines bulldoze cultural sites and leak poo poo everywhere for years" stance. Let's say Trump wins. This is four years of climate denialism, which is bad. Very, very bad. Then there will be another election, and even if you don't think that it'll be one where a strong left-ish candidate will represent the Democrats, it will definitely be one other than Joe Biden, one of the worst Dems on the climate, and thus another chance to try to make the party take climate change seriously. On the other hand, if Biden wins, we will have four years of oil and coal companies guiding his environmental policy, and given both Obama and Clinton most of the damage Trump did will become the new status quo rather than be fixed. He definitely will not do anything remotely close to sufficient for the entirety of his first term, and then he may well get a second term, which is another four years of letting the planet burn. Or maybe he'll die or only run for one term, meaning we get a different Dem candidate for president... Except it will almost certainly be his VP, who is extremely unlikely to be any better on the climate than he is because they're going to be part of his administration, listen to the same ghouls, and so on, and they could have up to two more terms; replacing them with someone better will be nigh-impossible because the DNC will rally behind their incumbent and may shut the primaries down entirely, just like how some Republican states have done for Trump this year (and how New York Democrats are trying to do as well). Or maybe the 2024 Republican candidate beats Biden/his VP; they definitely won't be any good on the climate, and again, could have up to two terms instead of just one and will have incumbency advantage helping them make that happen. So a Biden victory pretty much guarantees at least eight, possibly twelve years of effectively nothing being done about the environment before there's a reasonable chance of electing someone who will actually take the problem seriously. Four years of inaction is extremely bad. Eight to twelve years of it pretty much guarantees our doom, even if each of those eight+ years is slightly less bad than each year in the four year scenario. If you don't think that Biden will take meaningful action on the environment, then it's hard not to conclude that his victory means that's it, game over, we're doomed. And even most of his defenders here have admitted that Biden will not be close to sufficient in this regard, so... That's basically an admission that he's going to doom any chances of saving the planet; I've yet to hear any ways that he doesn't that aren't outright fantastical and not at all based in reality, though it'd admittedly be nice if there were. So, what do you think? Do you think Biden will actually take necessary action, or pick a VP who would take the climate seriously even though he doesn't? If not, how do you reason that Biden winning doesn't guarantee a minimum of eight years of less-than-nothing for the environment and near-certain climate apocalypse? How are u posted:No. I believe that Biden will be *better* on climate than Donald Trump. If those are my two choices then it is extremely clear who will be better on climate. Same to you; does "better" here still result in inevitable climate armageddon? If so, how is that actually better in anything but the most meaningless, pedantic way? If Biden does win and shows the same unwillingness to actually take meaningful action on the environment that he always has, and pretty much declares Trump's changes the new status quo, what will you do? Do you have any idea or plan for how you would handle this? Are you just going to accept the death of the planet because someone with a D next to their name is the one responsible? Roland Jones fucked around with this message at 20:42 on May 7, 2020 |
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May 7, 2020 20:35
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Chuka Umana posted:What makes you think Biden won't do anything. Good job not actually reading or addressing anything I said.
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May 7, 2020 20:48
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