[Allison W]

Originally Posted by cathexis

Perhaps, you misunderstand what I mean by Far Left. In my understanding, the Far Left are the parties that include the Trotskyists and Left Anarchists not what is being referred to in popular political rhetoric today. If you are indeed speaking the same parties as I am, then we need to have a real conversation.

The U.S. is not, in any way, in shape to have a revolution. The true left does not have the support needed. Now, if you're talking Sanders and Democratic Socialism, maybe the country can entertain the idea. Only maybe, but Bernie doesn't have the backing, polls reveal that centrists would be more likely to be successful.

I feel that we need to, above all, defeat Trump else this current Fascist course continue. However, there are leftists who believe that the more right-wing a climate, the more likely a revolution will succeed. Personally, I prefer not to tempt fate.

I mean, long-term? Liberal capitalism is a sinking ship and will give way to either socialism or fascism. I agree that right now we don't have the right conditions for revolution, but it's not because we're not far enough to the right, it's because right-wing propaganda that survival interests are determined by racial tribe rather than by economic class has been extremely successful. There's a reason I back the candidate who speaks of forbidden ideas like the class consciousness: the more people are aware that an elite class of users that can be defined by the power they have over resources and their ability to control others' access to resources, not any racial or ethnic grouping, is what's killing us, the more likely socialist revolution will succeed.

Also, centrism isn't a solution, because the status quo that centrists want to return to is the disease. Because the status quo, the center, is that the rich continue to get richer, the poor continue to get poorer, and the planet continues to choke to death on an endless spew of carbon, methane, and other greenhouse gases, and, oh, we continue putting immigrants in concentration camps because Trump didn't start that; it was happening under Obama too. That is the norm; that is our default. The right wing sublimates our fears into a fear of the brown and queer Other, and blames the brown and queer Other for the hopelessness looming in the mind of everyone who isn't in a bubble, and that's what put Trump in office in 2016. If we put a centrist in office in 2020, all we do is kick the can down the road for four more years and then get someone even worse than Trump in 2024 because only the fascists are offering even the pretense of an escape from the diseased status quo, even if it's a false one.

But yeah. The fascism is not something Trump created. It already exists at the heart of our political status quo, and that status quo resulted in Trump, not the other way around.

Also those polls don't measure the masses of disillusioned who only show up to vote if there's a candidate worth voting for; they are calibrated around the people who will show up even if the menu is absolute shit, because it's a lot harder to predict how many irregular voters a candidate will mobilize if they get nominated. Hell, they don't even measure people without landlines, which is to say, voters under 40 are largely excluded. But suffice it to say there are far more irregulars and young people to win over than there are "centrists" to win over.

Originally Posted by MsTinkerbelly

I would like to get back to the 2020 election if at all possible, anyone else?

Did you all see the news this weekend regarding Booker, Sanders and Harris stumping at a church where the Pastor has said that LGBTQIA folks are going to Hell and that we are all child molesters?

Are the candidates so out of touch that they just go where they are told to go, or do they just not care?

***edited to add...the story was on LGBTQ Nation.****

I can't speak for Booker or Harris, but this is... a little extreme for Sanders but otherwise on-brand. Like, this isn't the first time he's gone into a right-wing venue to spread left-wing ideas, because besides the young and the dispossessed, his campaign doesn't work by simply attempting to parrot agreement with someone's existing stances (either by moving to the center or preaching to the choir) but rather by winning over converts, frequently by way of priming non-rich cultural conservatives to vote for their economic interests rather than on cultural grounds. He won't win over that pastor, but he might win over some of the congregation.

Originally Posted by dark_crystal

I Beto having a moment out there or is it just in Texas?

He said "what the fuck" over the weekend and everyone swooned all over social media.

I mean I did gain a little respect for him when he had that candid explosion about what the source of our gun violence problem is, yes.

Speaking of that gun violence problem, I gotta say that very few of the ideas we actually have on the table now will have the desired effect. The only one currently in circulation that might actually help would be tightening restrictions on people convicted of DV charges having guns to give the DA and other local authorities less ability to let the perp weasel out of it. A lot of others would just make it more difficult for poor people (like minorities at risk of right-wing violence) to own guns. Also fuck Andrew Cuomo's stupid proposal for a mental health registry. That's all we fucking need, a centralized list of people to stigmatize for needing mental health care, when mental illness has no relationship to our current mass shooting crisis. We already know who our mass shooters are and they're not mentally ill: they're largely domestic abusers and the politically motivated, particularly white nationalists.

tl;dr If we banned domestic abusers and white nationalists from owning guns, we could stop mass shootings and abolish the police at the same time, this is extremely efficient policy-making.