this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
463 points (100.0% liked)
Politics
10176 readers
82 users here now
In-depth political discussion from around the world; if it's a political happening, you can post it here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's not a fair assessment. The Democrats have not had a solid majority in both houses of Congress and the presidency at the same time in a long time. Other than the promises they make, there is very little evidence of what they would do if there wasn't any Republican obstruction to stop them. They could very well do everything they say they'll do, for all we know.
As for Sanders, I'm not inclined to believe conspiracy theories about him. Look around you; this country is thoroughly right-wing. The vast majority of Americans are reflexively suspicious of avowed leftists like Sanders. He was never going to win the presidential primary, with or without shenanigans.
I believe it to be a fair assessment, and not because of my feelings or desire for change, but simply because I (and apparently some others further up this thread) saw basically the same thing happen.
I've worked closely enough to the Dem party/staffers/organizers that I've seen the same pandering play out locally, statewide and nationally in much the same way. It's mainly about playing ball to keep your funding streams up and to fill your little black book for the next cycles war chest. Certainly, some politicians are more genuine than others in the party but for the majority politics comes to be little more than moves to jostle purse strings from PACs, donors and the party itself. At the end of the day there's endless things that Dems could be doing to fight back against the takeovers of state level governments, school boards, appointee positions and the like, but they aren't.
We can say "but we're the one's who fight the good fight" but there's no keeping the genie in the bottle on the GOP side and Biden should have pushed his powers to the limit to gain every protection or have the courts limit his and future presidents power as a guardrail.
There certainly is always a narrative around these events, but Sanders was consistently polling as the most well liked politician in America for years around that time. There's no conspiracy around the ways that coverage began slanting as standings solidified, and every other contender in the race threw their support behind Biden (including Warren, which left everyone scratching their head.) Here's another article about MSNBC. If your actually interested that one has all of the measured instances laid out in google docs you can look at. I don't know any people alleging that the votes were manipulated in terms of ballot stuffing or anything, so if you mean that by conspiracy then I'd have to agree with you there.
Your assessment of political leanings in America also seems to be very skewed and there's a graph there that shows Dem/left sentiment at its highest point since 2008 during those primaries. Although it does seem to be ticking back conservative, but when Joe Biden still chooses to punch left on dem socialists after a failed insurrection that's not much of a surprise.
Your opinions lean pretty heavily on the findings of pollsters. 2016 taught us all not to listen to pollsters. Only the actual elections paint an accurate picture of US politics, and, well, there are still plenty of Republicans in office.
As for left sentiment being at its highest point since 2008, don't expect that to last. The economy is in the tank now, and people tend to vote hard right when they're hurting for money. They are of course exceedingly unwise to expect Republicans to solve their financial problems, but that's American voters for you.
LOL, no they don't? Your rehashed conclusion is:
Overall, you've wasted both our time and shown that you don't really want to discuss anything in good faith.
Sweet. That's a wrap for me.