Well, it is fucking kids. That should at least count as something, but it’s still insane that anyone is surprised by it.

But America brings so much to the table! There’s all the goods manufactured in America, there is all the creativity coming out of the American TV and movie industries, there is all the scientific research and knowledge that is totally not leaving. What about innovative software (licenses) and enshitified streaming services. America is on the cutting edge of defense and it’s partners totally trust that America would never yank away support for those weapons at the whim of a mad king or anything.

Most importantly, how will the world ever get by without the American financial system that contributes nothing to the world and demands all the wealth in return? I think the world will find America hard to shake.

(Massive /s, just in case it’s not obvious.)

Meh. We’ll see what happens when it threatens their office. A lot of them have already started changing their rhetoric.

This time the Democrats have an actual flesh and blood candidate who actually stands for something. If he wins, will that alter your perspective at all?

American voters suck, just like they have always sucked, just like voters suck everyplace else. That’s the field in which the game is played.

Being the lesser of two evils is not a good strategy. The greater evil gets all the attention and therefore enthusiasm. Good vs evil is a whole different dynamic.

Now it’s time for the “vote blue no matter who” crowd to put up or shut up. So far, party loyalty doesn’t seem very important to a lot of the establishment.

I imagine it would feel a bit like punching a pile of dried leaves.

Months. Did you somehow miss black lives matter? The rapid growth of the prison industrial complex? This is just the explosive conclusion to a pattern that was well underway long before Trump.

The left threatens power. MAGA doesn’t.

I think my explanation to another reply explains it.

https://midwest.social/comment/18384245

For the same reason they speak in reverence of Martin Luther King Jr. and pretend that liberals didn’t hate his guts back in the day.

On a long enough time scale the left always wins, and liberals always pretend that they backed the left the whole time and claim the victory for themselves.

“A liberal is someone who opposes every war except the current war and supports all civil rights movements except the one that’s going on right now.”

I predict Mamdani and Trump will have similar arcs through the media landscape. The media hated Trump but just couldn’t stop paying attention to him, even though every time they attacked him it only made him stronger. Now they are all bending the knee to him.

The same exact thing is happening with Mamdani, but this time for all the best reasons. Mamdani’s campaign might easily become a nationwide avalanche.

rightwing forces of state repression can easily push around a left that’s been trained and groomed to function as entirely beholden to corporate sponsors and big money donors.

That’s not a “left” at all. There are traditionally three groups that vie for power, royalty, merchants, and the people. The left serves the people, Democrats serve the merchants, and Republicans are the royalists.

The Democrats may represent the left some day, but it’s not who they are right now.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is a legitimate implementation of such a system. It will absolutely be intentionally flawed in ways that allow the disenfranchisement of millions of Americans citizens. That’s 100% what always happens with Republican initiatives to “protect” elections. It will be made trivial to “accidentally” remove legitimate voter registrations, and a labyrinthian bureaucratic process to correct them.

Are you referring to the three ancient Democratic House members that died in office? It does seem a little vindictive to blame them, but I guess it wouldn’t be unreasonable. It might make more sense to blame the Democratic voters who keep renominating these decrepit fucks.

I can’t believe I’m playing defense for MTG but, voting for the bill in the House was a low risk action because there was absolute certainty that there would have to be back and forth with the Senate. The vote in the house was basically a vote to get the process started in the Senate.

The bill as a whole though is still absolute shit stuffed with one horror after another. I do hold everyone who voted for it responsible for that. I just don’t think it’s a big deal that she voted for some specific aspects that she later opposed. That’s just how the process of Omnibus bills works.

I don’t care what your beliefs are. If you think the progressive movement is at a point where we have worry about oppressing the neoliberals, you have a screw loose and can only hurt us.

Do you not already know what happens when after a regime change the new one decides to do all the fucked up shit the last one did, but to the opposite group of people?

And… there it is. That statement betrays exactly what you think of progressives and socialists.

What you don’t get, or don’t want to get, is that there are three political philosophies at play here, and every one of them has it’s radicals and moderates. There is conservatism, neoliberalism, and progressivism.

You think neoliberalism is defined as the “center” between conservatives and progressives, but it’s absolutely just as possible to be a radical neoliberal as a radical progressive. In fact, the people running the Democratic party are hardcore radical neoliberals. They pretend to be conservative or progressive when it suits them, but they are neoliberal to the core. They are just as capable of doing “all the fucked up shit” to their opposition, and have in fact been doing it consistently for 50 years now.

Progressives get a the tip of a toe in the door, and out you come to sound the alarm that we’re going to take over the place and, what, start deporting Republicans?

You aren’t the centrist you think you are, and you are just another enemy to progressives.

More’s the pity.

I did what again? By voting for Harris? I mean maybe I did, but I wouldn’t assume she would have been that bad.

By your own admission you have given up. You aren’t fighting for anything so, your motivations are clearly on venting. Mine aren’t.

My intent is to have the best candidate possible to defeat whatever clown the Republicans put up in 2028. I want the Harris campaign to be seen for what it was, the last gasp of failed neoliberal politics. If it’s not, then people will believe the same old story that only a “centrist” can beat a Republican. If Democratic voters buy that again, then maybe we will be done. Even then, I won’t be giving up.

It’s clear that you think this started with Trump, but it didn’t. I’ve been fighting this fight since GWB was president. Over and over Democratic voters bought the establishment’s lies. Trump and MAGA are the result, not the cause. Fuck anyone giving the establishment another excuse for their failure.