2020 US General Election Thread V: Pandemic Postpones Polls

[San Lumen]

And I hope it’s otherwise

I still have no idea why you think the candidate who has exhibited the greatest amount of popular support is the worst one. Worse than trump but nominally blue Bloomberg, even.

He has a plurality of support most people voted for someone else

[Outer Sparta]

Biden is literally failing in colorado. He's in like fifth place

Sigh. I don’t see how he’s not the nominee at this point.

You're a Biden supporter?

[San Lumen]

Sigh. I don’t see how he’s not the nominee at this point.

You're a Biden supporter?

I support anyone but Sanders

[Necroghastia]

I still have no idea why you think the candidate who has exhibited the greatest amount of popular support is the worst one. Worse than trump but nominally blue Bloomberg, even.

He has a plurality of support most people voted for someone else

And what reason do you have to believe that these people who voted for other candidates would not vote for Bernie in the general?

[Outer Sparta]

You're a Biden supporter?

I support anyone but Sanders

Even a racist billionaire from New York who has funded Republican campaigns. Got it.

[San Lumen]

He has a plurality of support most people voted for someone else

And what reason do you have to believe that these people who voted for other candidates would not vote for Bernie in the general?

He would alienate the middle. He has said he doesn’t need the winning coalition of 2006, 2008, 2012 and 2018. Your not winning a national election with just big cities nor getting a house majority or many state legislatures

[Outer Sparta]

And what reason do you have to believe that these people who voted for other candidates would not vote for Bernie in the general?

He would alienate the middle. He has said he doesn’t need the winning coalition of 2006, 2008, 2012 and 2018. Your not winning a national election with just big cities nor getting a house majority or many state legislatures

Have you realized the political landscape has changed? Sun Belt states are getting in play. The same coalitions from a while ago won't apply to today or the future.

[Necroghastia]

And what reason do you have to believe that these people who voted for other candidates would not vote for Bernie in the general?

He would alienate the middle. He has said he doesn’t need the winning coalition of 2006, 2008, 2012 and 2018. Your not winning a national election with just big cities nor getting a house majority or many state legislatures

You keep saying this without backing it up.

And seriously, if you think Bernie is more likely to alienate people than Bloomberg... I don't know what to tell you.

[San Lumen]

He would alienate the middle. He has said he doesn’t need the winning coalition of 2006, 2008, 2012 and 2018. Your not winning a national election with just big cities nor getting a house majority or many state legislatures

Have you realized the political landscape has changed? Sun Belt states are getting in play. The same coalitions from a while ago won't apply to today or the future.

Alienating the suburbs will not win a national election

[Stylan]

And what reason do you have to believe that these people who voted for other candidates would not vote for Bernie in the general?

He would alienate the middle. He has said he doesn’t need the winning coalition of 2006, 2008, 2012 and 2018. Your not winning a national election with just big cities nor getting a house majority or many state legislatures

k you have to realize almost no one except for rich fucktards are centrist anymore

[Outer Sparta]

Have you realized the political landscape has changed? Sun Belt states are getting in play. The same coalitions from a while ago won't apply to today or the future.

Alienating the suburbs will not win a national election

"Alienating the suburbs" umm how exactly is Bernie going to alienate the suburbs???

[Stylan]

Have you realized the political landscape has changed? Sun Belt states are getting in play. The same coalitions from a while ago won't apply to today or the future.

Alienating the suburbs will not win a national election

lmaoooo, the suburbs will go for Trump or Biden, hell maybe even Bernie, not Bloomberg. Too much of a "rich new york liberal" type.

[Kruiven]

He would alienate the middle. He has said he doesn’t need the winning coalition of 2006, 2008, 2012 and 2018. Your not winning a national election with just big cities nor getting a house majority or many state legislatures

You keep saying this without backing it up.

And seriously, if you think Bernie is more likely to alienate people than Bloomberg... I don't know what to tell you.

Sexist, racist, republican mayor who wants to take my guns and icees is less divisive its true.

[Stylan]

You keep saying this without backing it up.

And seriously, if you think Bernie is more likely to alienate people than Bloomberg... I don't know what to tell you.

Sexist, racist, republican mayor who wants to take my guns and icees is less divisive its true.

Icees?

[Outer Sparta]

Alienating the suburbs will not win a national election

lmaoooo, the suburbs will go for Trump or Biden, hell maybe even Bernie, not Bloomberg. Too much of a "rich new york liberal" type.

Like Bloomberg would ever build a working coalition. His constituents are the upper class, maybe three or four Never Trumpers, and his paid cheerleaders.

[San Lumen]

Alienating the suburbs will not win a national election

"Alienating the suburbs" umm how exactly is Bernie going to alienate the suburbs???

The moderate dems who flipped the house should tell you how

[Ethel mermania]

Combined with a smattering of stereotypical centrism too.

Sentiments like ASB’s, even put nicely, are offensive to politically engaged young people. It labels their opinions lesser without actually engaging with the opinion itself. Being told “how silly are you for thinking things are bad” is invalidating and only fuels the stigma of older generations as fearful of change and opposition rather than worldly and experienced.

It doesn’t take much to realise that the US is in a steep downward spiral or is going to be in one by the end of the decade. It may not be awful right now (though it is bad), it’s only going to get worse if nothing happens or the government takes lukewarm steps to mitigate it.

The bar for developed nations is way higher than Afghanistan.

If you think I believe that everything here in America is hunky-dory, then you haven't been around here long enough to know how I really feel.

The thing I have with "politically engaged young people" is the way in which you think that these problems are new and that no one has ever thought about them before you and your generation came along, let alone tried to actually address them. Most of this I attribute to the poor quality of modern education in America, wherein students are never schooled adequately in either history or civics.

Of course, young people have always exhibited a certain degree of political myopia; my generation was probably as bad as any other when we were young, and many of us haven't ever gotten any better. It's a matter of patience and perspective, understanding that history is longer and life is more complex than most of us imagine when we are young.

So let's take the long view, shall we? In the same 50-60 years that our economy has stagnated and opportunity has dried up, we've made tremendous social progress. On last night's debate stage, there were two women and an openly gay man; back when I was young, the idea of a woman running for President would have been a novelty and the idea of an openly gay man doing so unthinkable. And if there were no person of color on that stage, well, we're less than four years past the first African-American President having served two full terms in office and the first woman nominee coming just 78,000 votes short of becoming our first female President.

But it's more than that: When I was young women were routinely steered into careers as schoolteachers ― and that's assuming they were allowed to contemplate having a "career" at all. Husbands had the right to force their wives to have sex with them whether they wanted it or not, and someone like Harvey Weinstein could have never been convicted of rape for any of the awful things he did. Interracial marriage was illegal in many States, and when William Shatner kissed Nichelle Nichols on an episode of Star Trek, local television stations refused to carry in across broad swaths of the country. We had cars that burned leaded gasoline even though there was evidence that lead-laced fumes were poisoning urban populations, energy conservation was considered a sign of weakness, and both wind farms and solar farms were nothing more than the pipe dreams of a handful of futurists. No nation had ever dismantled a nuclear weapon, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were caught up in a seemingly endless arms race, and we were all certain that humanity would end in a nuclear holocaust someday, whatever we might do to try and stop it.

So in complaining about all we've lost, I want you to consider also all that we have gained. That's not to say that I want you to write off the things we've lost as gone forever or stop dreaming; rather, I want you to realize that all of the progress we've made in areas like women's rights, gay rights, civil rights for persons of color, environmentalism, nuclear disarmament, and a host of other areas ― and then I want you to realize that none of these things were achieved through revolution: Rather each and every one of them was achieved through protests aimed at raising public awareness, public discourse and debate, and legislative incrementalism.

Indeed, even when we look at socialism itself, there's a lesson to be learned above change: Bolshevik's like Lenin, leaning on statements by Marx himself on the topic, asserted that a meaningful improvement in the fortunes of the working classes could only be achieved through violent revolution ― after all, the capitalists would never yield to anything but armed action. But against the Bolsheviks, the Fabian movement argued for political engagement and peaceful reform through traditional political mass mobilization.

So what did the Bolsheviks get for their effort? A failed revolution and a legacy of violence, oppression, and authoritarianism, whose ultimate product was ― was for it ― the authoritarian kleptocracy that is today's Russian Republic, which is actively working worldwide, not to advance the interests of the working class, but to advance ultranationalism on behalf of a small oligarchic elite In contrast, Fabianism gave us Western Europe and its strong socialist institutions, which still endure even in the face of today's current "neoliberal" counterrevolution.

My point is that everything we have gained to date ― whether here in America or in Europe ― we have obtained through the very incrementalism that the young find so utterly frustrating. The way forward is thus shown to be not through huge mass movements that sweep new leaders to power overnight, but through steady pressure all across the board, in which those who want a better world push everywhere to get what they want ― and eventually get it.

So it is, and so it will be with the current system. What we need here in America is not so much a "revolution" as a revival in unionism, in consumer protection, and in the need for sound regulation to limit the excesses of unbridled capitalism. We should push to make it easier for workers to organize, and organize them in the new industries that need it, including software engineering, information technology, retail sales, and in-office services. We need to push to make businesses more accountable for the safety and quality of the products we sell. We need to fight to defend hard-won environmental protections and try to restore banking regulations that were unwisely removed back in the 1990s. We need to work harder to protect retirement pensions, protect small investors, and encourage the growth of pension funds as a means of "socializing" businesses through the back door of mass stock ownership. These are all small things that can make a world of difference and can change the current tide against labor in the endless struggle over sharing the returns from economic activity. We should fight for restore sensible tax rates, but not push those rates up beyond the revenue-maximizing level ― because we need the money that a vital business sector produces to pay for the things we need to do, whether than by improving education and healthcare, fighting global warming, or expanding opportunity.

And we need to understand that the real enemy isn't capitalism (which can ultimately be harnessed for the good of society), but rather authoritarian nativism, which would mobilize us against each other in an attempt to drag the world back into the fear, hatred, and violence of the Middle Ages. That's why we need to engage the center in an effort to build a grand center-left coalition: If we refuse to accommodate the center, then the Medievalists will seek to draw that center into an alliance with the right to undo all the progress we have made across these last several decades. To be sure, engaging the center means accommodating its inherent conservatism, which in turn means that we may need to wait decades to make gains we'd rather see implemented yesterday; but there is simply no other way to get there and then keep what we have won.

I understand that this really sucks if you're young and that it means you might have to wait a lifetime to see something you think you shouldn't have to wait for at all. But that's what we know works, so all I can say is: Deal with it.

This shouldn't be the next to last post on a page

My only quibble with it is that mayor Pete would not have been on the stage because he would have been arrested for sodomy.

[Washington Resistance Army]

He would alienate the middle. He has said he doesn’t need the winning coalition of 2006, 2008, 2012 and 2018. Your not winning a national election with just big cities nor getting a house majority or many state legislatures

k you have to realize almost no one except for rich fucktards are centrist anymore

In order the population is conservative (37%), moderate (35%) and then liberal (24%). The idea that nobody is in the middle is absurd.

[Outer Sparta]

"Alienating the suburbs" umm how exactly is Bernie going to alienate the suburbs???

The moderate dems who flipped the house should tell you how

Getting increased voter turnout doesn't equal alienating the suburbs.

[Kruiven]

lmaoooo, the suburbs will go for Trump or Biden, hell maybe even Bernie, not Bloomberg. Too much of a "rich new york liberal" type.

Like Bloomberg would ever build a working coalition. His constituents are the upper class, maybe three or four Never Trumpers, and his paid cheerleaders.

Hold on now, I say we listen to the rich and the republicans. It's never gone wrong before.

[The Black Forrest]

Sexist, racist, republican mayor who wants to take my guns and icees is less divisive its true.

Icees?

People had a freak out because Bloomberg wanted to ban the sale of gigantic soda drinks.

;

[Kruiven]

k you have to realize almost no one except for rich fucktards are centrist anymore

In order the population is conservative (37%), moderate (35%) and then liberal (24%). The idea that nobody is in the middle is absurd.

Moderate doesn't equal wouldn't vote for Sanders or Warren though, case in point Nevada.

[Washington Resistance Army]

In order the population is conservative (37%), moderate (35%) and then liberal (24%). The idea that nobody is in the middle is absurd.

Moderate doesn't equal wouldn't vote for Sanders or Warren though, case in point Nevada.

Certainly. I'm just saying the idea that moderates or centrists don't exist at all is absurd.

[Stylan]

lmaoooo, the suburbs will go for Trump or Biden, hell maybe even Bernie, not Bloomberg. Too much of a "rich new york liberal" type.

Like Bloomberg would ever build a working coalition. His constituents are the upper class, maybe three or four Never Trumpers, and his paid cheerleaders.

Yeah thats what i mean

[Kruiven]

Icees?

People had a freak out because Bloomberg wanted to ban the sale of gigantic soda drinks.

;

^