2020 Election

Probably Jimmy Carter.

 

sniffy mcsniffer was in town today.. couldnt even fill a small room.

 

I know Elizabeth Warren has came out against him becauase he fought her on consumer protections a few years ago for bankruptcy, which is a perfectly fair criticism for her to make and good for her for speaking up about it. I'm not sure who the other 2 are, I havent heard anything about it.

Also isnt it a little disingenuous to call things like universal healthcare radical. It isnt radical but right wing factions and corporate interests have spent a lot of time and money convincing the American people it is. America's employer based insurance system is actually the radical system, compared to the rest of the world.
And now there's a whole primary season to convince people it isnt a radical idea, isnt that wonderful

I dont really want to comment any further on why people vote the way they do, I just think that voting for a candidate who supposedly has the best chance of winning and no other reason backfired really badly in 2016, i'll just leave it at that

 

Besides Elizabeth Warren, Bernie has criticized him for taking money from big donors. Buttagieg's comments were more muted, but he told FOX he hasn’t “come to this by marinating in Washington for a couple of decades.” Far be it from me to call universal health care radical, nor would I put raising the minimum wage and college loan forgiveness in that category. But Elizabeth Warren has more social programs than you can shake a stick at, and as the late Sen. Dirksen used to say"a billion here, a billion there soon adds up to big money. Bernie's social welfare programs would probably run into multi-trillion dollars in a country already deeply in debt. Of course we'll pay for it all by soaking the rich, but I doubt they'll just stand still for that. As for the strategy backfiring in 2016, there was a lot going on in that election, including the Comey memo, wilileaks, and all the nefarious Russian activities documented in the Mueller report. I doubt that many people voted for Hillary for no other reason. My reason was that Trump was the alternative. Biden has his limitations, and I'm afraid Biden may already be damaged goods in a party increasingly dominated by purists. We'll see.

 

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Is this how you think? I mean it’s interesting that most of the discussion coming from the left leaning/Democrat people about which candidate to go with is about policy, voting record, and the possibility of those attracting votes but that you seem to see things in terms of gender, race and sexuality.

Is that how you view and chose your political candidates not on their record or proposals but on their gender, race, sexuality and just not been left wing in anyway?

I suppose it would make sense seeing that you seem unable to defend any political viewpoint you hold.

 

Okie

This seems in the nature of the American political system where you have this party non-party set up, in many places leadership battles often go on behind the scenes within the political party which chooses a party leader who fight the election, with the full backing of the party on an agreed manifesto. In the US its done out in public and even those that have little support in the party (or even little known) can enter the race for the top job of President.

You have in effect three party leaders, house, senate and presidential nomination, which might have differing agendas and powerbases and that actually may be in conflict and where the manifesto can be vague and unclear.

I’m not sure what you mean by ‘purists’. I’m on record as saying that I think the Democrats moved to far towards ‘third way’ neoliberalism back in the 1990 and that it needed some pull from the left, but I don’t think that pull is that great at the moment. AOC and others might be getting the spotlight (especially in the right wing media) but do they really have that much control over Nancy Pelosi’s agenda?

I also think that a lot of the American public’s views on social issues have moved on in the last twenty years the old right wing tactic of pushing ‘wedge’ issues (‘god, guns and gays’) that worked so well in the past may not have the same force in the future. Even on tax and healthcare many Americans ideas have shifted, with the Trump tax cut for the wealthy (as many down the line found there taxes rise) having concentrated minds and the Republican debacle over ‘repeal and replace’ making it clear they hadn’t a clue.

I should also add that I’m watching this from the outside in a purely academic way and as Mel has said these are very early days.

 

I don't think so. I think AOC is putting her name out there so that she can run for president in 2024.

I am not so sure. There was a push to make a more liberal society in the 60s, and 70s, but that was reversed in 1980. While there have been some progressive policies inacted, overall 'murica is a center right society, imo.

 

And just look at all those white people!

 

I seriously doubt that's the motivating factor for her. She's just happy to be a congresswoman.

 

Will she even be 35 in 2024?

 

Joe Biden Launches Presidential Bid With Fundraiser Filled With Corporate Lobbyists and GOP Donors

 

crazy unhinged white people..

 

Joe Biden The Farewell Tour.. @ticketmaster.com

 

Interesting that the right here doesn’t seem to have anything of substance or intelligence to say and seems obsessed with race, is that now the definition of the US right?

 

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The US has on the main been centre right because its people have been taught if not indoctrinated into thinking centre right.

Many people think of politics in terms of the election cycles, say five or ten years, but look at it and there are longer term trends

During the so called ‘Gilded Age’ (1860s to 1896) the dominant ideas were ‘free market’ laissez-faire type economics and the wealth sponsored ideas of Social Darwinism the policies based on these views favoured the interests of the few rather than the many and created a high levels of inequality. As a reaction to that situation there was a movement to the left amongst many Americans.

That movement lead by the 1910’s to the US Socialist Party been one of the largest in the world (and growing) and in the face of a lot of harassment and opposition it is amazing that in 1912 the US Socialist Party had over a thousand elected officials in local government and that Eugene Debs got a million votes in that year’s presidential race (6 per cent of the vote, the envy of many socialist around the world at the time). It was able to get over thirty Mayors into power as well as many legislators and had large numbers of loyal votes in many urban areas. As said it was a growing force.

In reply to that there was what is called the ‘First Red Scare’ (1917-1920) with the Democrats and Republicans basically joining together to put down their left wing opposition.

The leader of the Socialist Party, Eugene Debs was imprisoned in 1918 for opposing WWI under the ‘Sedition Act’ brought in by the Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Another socialist opponent of the war was also sentence to prison, Victor Berger, however he did get elected to Congress but was refused entry this caused a re-election that he again won, but he was still refused entry. In other areas like New York openly socialist representatives to the city and state - who had been democratically elected - were also barred from their posts. Around this time many states passed laws banning the display of red flags (a communist and socialist emblem).

Even with this suppression left wing ideas where still popular and as Okie has commented many Americans believe (and were taught) that Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal the polices of which were right leaning Keynesian (not socialist as some claim) saved the US from going ‘communist’.

It was hard to be anti-communist when Soviet Russia was an ally during WWII but the ‘Second Red Scare’ flared up not long after as part of emerging Cold War.

I think most Americans know about Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-left wing campaign but they might not realise that behind the scenes the government was been used by both Democrats and Republicans to purge left wing thought from US society through harassment by the FBI, employment loyalty oaths and the House Un-American Activities Committee.

To get a flavour of the thinking at the time I’d give you a quote from Albert Canwell who was chair of the California state committee – “If someone insists there is discrimination against Negroes in this country, or that there is inequality of wealth, there is every reason to believe that person is a communist”

Political innovations that also threatened the major parties allowed in more left wing politicians were also attacked as ‘communist’. For example in New York where proportional representation had weakened Democratic Party rule (the Democrats won 95.3% of the seats with only 66.5% of the vote before PR but after they only got only 65.5% of the seats on 64% of the vote PR had also allowed two socialists to be elected to the city council).

So the Democratic Party made every effort to repeal PR by linking it with communism, describing the single transferable vote as "the political importation from the Kremlin," the "first beachhead of Communist infiltration in this country," and "an un-American practice which has helped the cause of communism and does not belong in the American way of life." The campaign resulted in the repeal of PR.

And it wasn’t just the state that was involved in suppressing left wing ideas as Sara Diamond points out in Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States

"By 1963, corporations were spending an estimated $25 million per year on anticommunist literature... Some corporations circulated print and audio-visual materials produced by the John Birch Society; other corporations produced their own in-house literature...By the early 1960s, the Nation magazine reported that there was a minimum of 6,600 corporate-financed anticommunist broadcasts, carried by more than 1,300 radio and television stations at a total annual budget of about $20 million...Leading sponsors included Texas oil billionaire H.L. Hunt and Howard J. Pew of Sun Oil. The corporate sector's massive anticommunist propaganda campaigns created a favorable climate for the mobilization of activist groups like the John Birch Society."

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So by the 1960’s you had a country that basically didn’t have a coherent left wing, with a two party system of a centre right liberal Democratic Party and a right wing Republican Party although at that time both to a large extend based their viewpoints on a right wing versions of Keynesian ideas.

That began to change on the right in the 1980’s and for the Democrats in the 1990’s when the more right wing ideolgy neoliberalism that was heavily sponsored and promoted by wealth started to become dominant and still is today.

Now it is interesting to note that neoliberalist ideas are in large part based on ‘free market’ economics and Social Darwinist thinking and many have dubbed the present era 'the second gilded age' with the policies based on neoliberalism having brought about levels of inequality that are similar if not greater than those in the first one.

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OK given the time and space this can only be a simplistic overview but I could go into more detail if you wish and I can offer some further reading

Who Built America: Working People and the Nation's History by American Social History Project

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

 

Conservative Monmouth, poll released a few days ago:

Joe Biden: 27 percent

Bernie Sanders: 20 percent

Kamala Harris: 8 percent

Pete Buttigieg: 8 percent

Elizabeth Warren: 6 percent

Beto O’Rourke: 4 percent

Cory Booker: 2 percent

John Hickenlooper: 2 percent

Amy Klobuchar: 1 percent


3 other polls have Biden surging well ahead of Bernie Sanders

 

And only 551 days to go

 

It’s unfortunately the reality we now find ourselves in,

Like Christmas displays going up in the store shelves in September

 

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Anyway to continue – the thing is that McCartyism carried on and continues to this day - its just that it has become so normalised that many Americans just don’t see it.

You see it every time someone calls out someone or something for been socialist or communist when it is to the left of their right wing viewpoint.

It was seen when Obamacare was attacked by right wingers as been socialist and because it was socialist it would bring about ‘death panels’

And you see it in such things as Republican representative Matt Shea claiming that the reason America was no longer a “beacon of Christianity”, was because the US was turning left wing "And it’s not knowing that the communists are training, they’re planning, they’re organizing and they are lying in wait.”

The question is are a majority of Americans still falling for that kind of BS?

 

The reality is also that such polls aren't that significant or much saying. The only way they could be significant is if people take them a little too serious and make it a self fulfilling prophecy