2020 Presidential Election

[dark_crystal]

Originally Posted by dark_crystal

Has any yuppie realized this, ever?

...in the interest of keeping it 2020 and not relitigating 2016:

[Martina]

Yes, Biden is a mainstream Dem who supported most of this stuff. However, he has been a consistent supporter of unions, whose destruction has been the linchpin of neo-liberal domestic politics. Reviving unions is also they key to returning this country to someplace workers can afford to live. The Clinton's undermined unions at every turn and from the beginning.

Originally Posted by dark_crystal

...in the interest of keeping it 2020 and not relitigating 2016:

[Martina]

Well the election is over and Trump won, thanks to mainstream Dems having their heads lodged firmly up their asses.

The point of that little thing I posted is that almost any Democratic candidate is likely to do much better this time around. It was semi-encouraging.

I will say that those who fear the left have less to worry about this time. I have read that the Bernie voters who went Trump are a group that no longer exists in terms of voting behavior. Duh.

I voted Clinton. But fuck every fucking asshole who tells third party voters not to vote their conscience after fielding a candidate like Clinton. She would have won if her campaign had not been so smug, stupid, and incompetent. I will vote for any Democrat who is nominated as I imagine most Trump haters will.

But those Clintonites excoriating third party voters then and now don't have a leg to stand on. Your horrendous candidate lost. And not because of Berners. Because she lost Obama voters and urban African Americans and because she didn't reach the suburban white women she spent so much money courting. Not a fucking thing to do with voters who never have and never will vote Dem. They honestly never expected to get them, so those post game arguments are ignorant. What she figured wrong was the base and how fucking sick to death they are of mainstream Dems not having a clue about their lives and priorities.

Listen, I have hated with a burning hot hatred both Clinton's for two decades. I hate Bill more. I am not sexist, and I don't feel one morsel of regret for hating most of what she stands for. She is a power hungry politician who doesn't give a fuck about poor and working people. She never has.

Yes, Biden has stood for most of the same. But the support for unions is redeeming. I believe him re that. He's far from my first choice. Far. But I will vote for him with much less angst than I brought to voting for Clinton.

[Martina]

All this stuff about her being a woman candidate. I don't give a damn what gender a candidate is. I never have. The Brits had Margaret Thatcher. Gender doesn't guarantee shit. I won't feel a thing when the first woman candidate wins the Presidency. I get it that is meaningful. But it doesn't mean anything to me. I don't care. Don't give a tinkers damn. I cared when Obama was elected. I thought I'd never see the day. And I will care when a gay person is elected.

There are lots of women in power. I wouldn't dream of extending them the benefit of the doubt because of gender. Women are the backbone of the Republican Party. My family is full of right wing women. I don't understand why every post mentions it. One was like if you want a perfect woman, dig up . . . Or a perfect man, dig up. Who the fuck thinks that way? I guess lots of people. I just don't care.

It's true that even decent men have blind spots. And no apologies for that. But being a decent human being, a brave and strong candidate, and standing up for the American people -- I kind of put that first.

[Martina]

They scapegoated poor people and people of color to get Bill reelected. I think that's evil.

There's a great book called Listen, Liberal, which explains the neo-liberal anti-worker politics that the Clinton's epitomized. It's not about being a yuppie yourself. It's about supporting the professional classes at the expense of workers while blaming the workers for their losses. The fact is that Clinton politics and their consequences destroyed the middle class in ways Reagan could never have envisaged.

It's a truly evil politics, capitalist to the core. Heartless and cynical.

[Martina]

To add to my list, remember NAFTA???????

Republicans wrote that in order to destroy labor unions. It could not pass because Democrats opposed it. Then Clinton was elected, and his first big accomplishment was to pass NAFTA. He wasn't the first Dem to undermine unions, but he took it to a new level. And the Democrats never looked back. They have helped engineer inequality for the sake of the professional elites and corporate interests. And then they blame working people, saying oh you should have gone to Harvard or Yale like I did.

That Listen, Liberal book by Thomas Frank takes you through the Democrats' abandonment of the working class legislation by legislation. No one, no one is more culpable than the Clintons. Boarded up main streets are their legacy. Trump is their legacy.

[Kätzchen]

Originally Posted by Martina

To add to my list, remember NAFTA???????

Republicans wrote that in order to destroy labor unions. It could not pass because Democrats opposed it. Then Clinton was elected, and his first big accomplishment was to pass NAFTA. He wasn't the first Dem to undermine unions, but he took it to a new level. And the Democrats never looked back. They have helped engineer inequality for the sake of the professional elites and corporate interests. And then they blame working people, saying oh you should have gone to Harvard or Yale like I did.

That Listen, Liberal book by Thomas Frank takes you through the Democrats' abandonment of the working class legislation by legislation. No one, no one is more culpable than the Clintons. Boarded up main streets are their legacy. Trump is their legacy.

I do not argue your point about the book by Thomas Frank, Martina, but I think Thomas Frank, once a 'college republican', wrote a more telling book concerning conservative think tank politics: The Wrecking Crew: How The Conservatives Rule (August 2008). I read this particular book of his because he's got a bone to pick with GOP cronies who basically steered the process for NAFTA. As I recall, right after three horrid terms of Reagonomics, Bush SR was the one to instigate back room talks about NAFTA. His son Bush JR was the one who tried to push it through, but thankfully the Democratic Party denounced it, and refused to vote it in. THEN, on the tails of Bush Jr leaving office, it was Clinton who supposedly got it pushed through, but under the premise of 'bi-partisan' dialogue between two political parties: the notorious GOP; and the Democratic Party led by the Clinton voter base. Like I said, I could be wrong, but this is how I recall the spiraling NAFTA issue. I even excerpted some of The Wrecking Crew book by Thomas, in my senior capstone Labor paper for my bachelor of science degree, which highlighted key elements of NAFTA during the year Obama was elected President of the US, back in 2008.

I am personally OVER the 'blame game' of who did what, etc.

To be thread compliant, I still have not any good idea on who will ultimately lead the Democratic Party out of the depths of GOP hell. There are quite a few contenders in the field, it's early yet, I keep hoping that Texas Democrat Julian Castro will make a stronger showing than what he did a few weeks ago; but I guess since he sits on the Senate Intelligence committee (right?), he and several others have their hands full, with all the connecting-the-dots issues pertaining to the number one psycho sitting in the WH.

I don't know what the next few months will bring, but I think the democratic party has already sounded the "All Hands On Deck" alarm bells and it's going to take every bit of concentration and effort to oust this proverbial cancer from the WH and from the ranks of the GOP.

Again, I am putting all my weight behind a candidate who has the best interests of our country in terms of Economy, Labor, National Debt etc, their stand on reigning in the white collar crimes committed by big super-pac behaviors of Wall Street and the Banking industry, and bigger yet, I want a president who will back up Voting Rights issues and a contender who brings on board a team of vital political senators and representatives who can make sure voting rights, women's issues and affordable healthcare is available to everyone in our country. To me, after watching weeks of news about how the current WH resident and his team of crooked politicians and Supreme Court justices are upending and defanging time immemorial laws on the books that protect citizens of all stripes and marginalized members of society too, I seriously hope the general public is paying attention to every single detail presented via media outlets because each day we see a variety of a certain 'truth' which is hardly truthful at all, IMHO.

<<<<<<<~~~ I'm part of the democracy that abides by the mindset of:

Of The People, By The People, and For The People (that's what democracy is to me).

[Martina]

Generations devastated by mass incarceration is their legacy. That alone is an evil whose dimensions can't ever be grasped. And as a previous post pointed out, Biden played a role in that.

An irony is that while Bill Clinton kinda sorta regrets that, Biden was still playing it up as an accomplishment until very recently. Another irony is the recent reforms were facilitated by Jared Kushner.