If Warren is another Obama, that's still pretty good, at least to me. There are a lot of worse outcomes.
I think this, in particular, is the result of coming from a very different ideology and world view and not attempting to rectify it. Which is frankly fairly common when leftists raise some concerns here. For a lot of us another Obama is, at best, treading water.
-Robinson's last sentence here only seems persuasive if you view the Democratic establishment as the enemy rather than as allies.
Well, yeah. He's explaining why a lot of leftists have problems with Warren. Not party loyal liberals.
edit: Sorry if this is giving the impression of cherry picking your post, I'm not really trying to address or defend the article so much as highlight what I think is a consistent theme in liberals interpreting leftist goals and beliefs in the lens of "well leftists are just more left wing liberals" and that's not really true. I think that's mostly why liberals can't understand how leftists see such a difference between Warren and Sanders while to us its pretty plain.
i'm kind of less interested in advocating for sanders, at the moment, than i am in helping to define the difference between a liberal position and a leftist one. i think a lot of the conversations we had on this forum would flow better if we had a better collective understanding that these are actually very different things
the basic difference imo is that leftism sees the fundamental opposition of politics as between labour and capital, whereas liberalism - even left liberalism - tends to accept the hayekian framework of business vs. government, thinking that the central question of politics is about how much power the market should have vs. how much power the state should have
If Warren is another Obama, that's still pretty good, at least to me. There are a lot of worse outcomes.
I think this, in particular, is the result of coming from a very different ideology and world view and not attempting to rectify it. Which is frankly fairly common when leftists raise some concerns here. For a lot of us another Obama is, at best, treading water.
-Robinson's last sentence here only seems persuasive if you view the Democratic establishment as the enemy rather than as allies.
Well, yeah. He's explaining why a lot of leftists have problems with Warren. Not party loyal liberals.
edit: Sorry if this is giving the impression of cherry picking your post, I'm not really trying to address or defend the article so much as highlight what I think is a consistent theme in liberals interpreting leftist goals and beliefs in the lens of "well leftists are just more left wing liberals" and that's not really true. I think that's mostly why liberals can't understand how leftists see such a difference between Warren and Sanders while to us its pretty plain.
i'm kind of less interested in advocating for sanders, at the moment, than i am in helping to define the difference between a liberal position and a leftist one. i think a lot of the conversations we had on this forum would flow better if we had a better collective understanding that these are actually very different things
the basic difference imo is that leftism sees the fundamental opposition of politics as between labour and capital, whereas liberalism - even left liberalism - tends to accept the hayekian framework of business vs. government, thinking that the central question of politics is about how much power the market should have vs. how much power the state should have
A central lesson of Obama’s presidency is: You cannot succeed without a movement behind you. The approach of getting the “best and brightest” in a room together and having them make good plans will inevitably fail. We cannot elect the best policy wonk. We have to elect the best organizer. And once we accept this as a crucial criterion for selecting a candidate, Sanders and Warren start to look very different in ways that could well mean the difference between political success and political failure, even if their policies were identical.
One of Robinson's key arguments is that Bernie will be an "organizer-in-chief" who will build a powerful labor movement that will then I guess force the Republicans in Congress to do what Bernie wants, and that Warren won't.
But the truth is that Republicans won't bow to public pressure the way he's dreaming about; they'll only respond to being voted out. If Bernie's movement isn't sufficient yet to win him the Democratic nomination, I'm not sure how we should expect a Bernie general candidacy to vastly overwhelm historical partisan limits and give Democrats supermajorities in 2020. This is one of my fundamental problems with Sanders as a whole; his plans are predicated on a so-called "revolution" that has yet to appear. Does he need the power of the Presidency in order to build this movement?
just wrt this
certainly i think bernie would be a lot more effective as an organiser if he was the president, as opposed to just some guy. what i imagine him doing is showing up on the front lines of strikes and union movements, as the actual president, and saying "i stand with these people". he would also be doing stuff like taking people into canada to buy cheaper drugs, which would get vastly more press and garner much more public interest if he did it as the president
i don't know if warren is going to do that stuff. and i think that, once your radical legislative agenda has completely stalled out in the senate, that's the stuff you're going to need to do in order to keep it alive. i also think you will be genuinely surprised how many non-voters and disinterested people begin to tune in once the president goes into their community and starts up with this kind of on-the-ground organising
it's easy to assume if you're an online politics junkie that everyone is either a committed republican or a committed democrat, bar a few weird floating moderates, and that the people who don't vote and don't pay attention are not important in any significant way. but that's the biggest block of people and my sense is that if you figure out how these people think, and how to talk to them in a way that makes sense to them, you'll find there's a lot more potential there than you expected
and i have actually done this kind of community organising, and it achieved basically the results i outlined here, so it's not like i'm completely just guessing
It’s probably true that with the power of the office Sanders would probably be an effective “organizer in chief”, but I still think he overestimates this groundswell revolution that is going to drive his policy goals.
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
The real problem with the "Sanders as Organizer-In-Chief" narrative is that if he were actually better at it than Clinton or Warren you'd expect him to be winning the primaries, or at least growing his share of the electorate. I'm sure from the perspective of someone organizing for Sanders/ the DSA, it's deeply plausible; you've been inspired to organize, why not other people too?
Also, considering Warren's recent rise in thr polls and Sanders' relative stagnation, it appears as if Warren is the better organizer anyway. I mean, she's the one going out there, speaking and listening to people and increasing her support. She also has that plan to raise money for Senate races, against Collins for example, in order to flip the Senate, a key factor in passing any leftist legislation. She's organizing circles around Sanders.
Robinson’s article illustrates my biggest political criticism of Bernie—that he isn’t creating a movement, but a cult of personality.
Robinson, and most Bernie supporters, admit that Warren’s policies are virtually identical. Despite the indication that Bernie met his ostensible goal—forcing the Democratic Party to the left—some of his supporters attack her at every turn. These attacks are often personal, occasionally toxic, and their thrust seems to be less “we support these policies/philosophies because [reason]” and more “only Bernie can save us.”
That’s why I think his presidency would be potentially disastrous. He built his national image on attacking other Democrats. That won’t chance just because he took office, and I could see that contributing to losing ground in the House in 2022.
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ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, ModeratorMod Emeritus
Everything I hear about Tulsi Gabbard makes me like her less and less.
My distaste for her is Brobdingnagian at this point.
Whenever I start to think that Dems are being overly partisan and blinded by loyalty I remind myself about the enormous shit this thread has taken on her, and feel better.
This attitude about her really puzzles me. When she was younger she went in with her dad on anti-LGBT stuff, but has since done a complete 180 and her actual voting record on LGBTQ legislation is pristine, at least according to the HRC. She has apologized and taken full responsibility for her past. She is very conscious of how taxpayer money is spent, and has a history of trying to minimize expenditures on her own behalf. She's a combat veteran, and she is strongly against interventionist war, possibly the most progressive and anti-war candidate you could hope for. She's outspoken about issues that affect veterans and the military in general, environmentalism, m4a, criminal justice reform, and wants to see taxpayer money spent domestically on those things. She is aware of the seriousness (and reality, for that matter) of environmental racism, an important box not many can check, and strongly supports indigenous causes, something else that is very important and often overlooked. It is so important that properly acknowledging and addressing them could have made a noticeable impact on recent elections. She's a Samoan-American POC, the first to serve in Congress, and she is non-Christian, both of which would be huge firsts for a President.
You can say her campaign got off to a very weak start (it did) or that she's too green to be running for President, and she's definitely not perfect, but none of them are and the seething hatred I see of her here feels unwarranted at best. She is not a cookie-cutter Democrat, so suggesting that it's good that party loyalty isn't a factor in whether or not people hate her feels pretty ironic because she is not first an foremost a party loyalist. She has spent her time in Congress working toward some pretty important goals, and has introduced and seen pass more than one piece of legislation in service of those goals. I think I'm missing something, or maybe I'm not, which is... worse.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
Well, she’s one of the few remaining House Dems who don’t support impeachment. This is a new distinction for Tulsi, but it’s also a major error as far as I’m concerned.
I’m willing to believe that she’s changed from her virulently anti-gay past, but even if she has, any candidate who’s against impeachment will never get my vote.
Robinson’s article illustrates my biggest political criticism of Bernie—that he isn’t creating a movement, but a cult of personality.
Robinson, and most Bernie supporters, admit that Warren’s policies are virtually identical. Despite the indication that Bernie met his ostensible goal—forcing the Democratic Party to the left—some of his supporters attack her at every turn. These attacks are often personal, occasionally toxic, and their thrust seems to be less “we support these policies/philosophies because [reason]” and more “only Bernie can save us.”
That’s why I think his presidency would be potentially disastrous. He built his national image on attacking other Democrats. That won’t chance just because he took office, and I could see that contributing to losing ground in the House in 2022.
There's a reason why I think despite their policies being similar Warren has the Can-Do attitude that sells it way better than Sander's Angry Grandpa persona.
I hope it’s Warren and Bernie in the final stretch of the primary and not Warren and Biden.
I’d rather have Warren and Bernie debating on the merits of their individual leftward plans than Warren and Biden debating on if a leftward plan is what this country even needs vs “returning to norms.”
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
I don't think there's good evidence to suggest Sanders can create a huge movement to back his ideas from the detailed all the way to the massive.
Sanders actual campaign suggests a weak ability to put together a strong Administration. His staff are inevitably blamed for their toxic behavior but he hired them. Other candidates don't bring on those kinda of personalities but Sanders does out of preference or desperation and neither suggests a well staffed Administration(perhaps why the article scoffs at "best and brightest")
In endorsements he is running 6th using the 538 methodology. All the endorsements are either from his small home state or they are DNC members who got that position as Sanders representatives. The one exception seems to be the President of the Maine Senate who was formerly a Republican when he first ran and keeps losing house primaries
A big part of any such movement would require swaying elected officials and he isn't doing that. Other than being charismatic or having good ideas, the other way people do that is getting people elected or showing electoral clout.
In 2018 Sanders did the opposite. His backed candidates did poorly in a wave election. The PAC he set up backed candidates who did poorly in a wave year. Both lost most primaries and when they won, even in competitive districts, they did worse than the wave and partisan lean would have predicted.
And finally he is not winning. He's a distant third. It's a variation on the electability argument but that not only will he get elected but he'll create a huge groundswell etc. But you can't credibly make that argument when two candidates beat you. If your case relies on being immensely popular you better be winning
Everything I hear about Tulsi Gabbard makes me like her less and less.
My distaste for her is Brobdingnagian at this point.
Whenever I start to think that Dems are being overly partisan and blinded by loyalty I remind myself about the enormous shit this thread has taken on her, and feel better.
This attitude about her really puzzles me. When she was younger she went in with her dad on anti-LGBT stuff, but has since done a complete 180 and her actual voting record on LGBTQ legislation is pristine, at least according to the HRC. She has apologized and taken full responsibility for her past. She is very conscious of how taxpayer money is spent, and has a history of trying to minimize expenditures on her own behalf. She's a combat veteran, and she is strongly against interventionist war, possibly the most progressive and anti-war candidate you could hope for. She's outspoken about issues that affect veterans and the military in general, environmentalism, m4a, criminal justice reform, and wants to see taxpayer money spent domestically on those things. She is aware of the seriousness (and reality, for that matter) of environmental racism, an important box not many can check, and strongly supports indigenous causes, something else that is very important and often overlooked. It is so important that properly acknowledging and addressing them could have made a noticeable impact on recent elections. She's a Samoan-American POC, the first to serve in Congress, and she is non-Christian, both of which would be huge firsts for a President.
You can say her campaign got off to a very weak start (it did) or that she's too green to be running for President, and she's definitely not perfect, but none of them are and the seething hatred I see of her here feels unwarranted at best. She is not a cookie-cutter Democrat, so suggesting that it's good that party loyalty isn't a factor in whether or not people hate her feels pretty ironic because she is not first an foremost a party loyalist. She has spent her time in Congress working toward some pretty important goals, and has introduced and seen pass more than one piece of legislation in service of those goals. I think I'm missing something, or maybe I'm not, which is... worse.
I'll be honest, I don't know much about the good works/policies of Tulsi Gabbard. I checked up based on your callout, and yes, she's done some admirable things.
But prior to this, I really only knew two things.
1) Her position on impeachment, both in the abstract, and with regards this President specifically.
2) Her position on Assad and Syria.
And regardless of her positions on the things I like, I consider both positions MASSIVELY negative, if not disqualifying, for the Presidential nomination.
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
A central lesson of Obama’s presidency is: You cannot succeed without a movement behind you. The approach of getting the “best and brightest” in a room together and having them make good plans will inevitably fail. We cannot elect the best policy wonk. We have to elect the best organizer. And once we accept this as a crucial criterion for selecting a candidate, Sanders and Warren start to look very different in ways that could well mean the difference between political success and political failure, even if their policies were identical.
One of Robinson's key arguments is that Bernie will be an "organizer-in-chief" who will build a powerful labor movement that will then I guess force the Republicans in Congress to do what Bernie wants, and that Warren won't.
But the truth is that Republicans won't bow to public pressure the way he's dreaming about; they'll only respond to being voted out. If Bernie's movement isn't sufficient yet to win him the Democratic nomination, I'm not sure how we should expect a Bernie general candidacy to vastly overwhelm historical partisan limits and give Democrats supermajorities in 2020. This is one of my fundamental problems with Sanders as a whole; his plans are predicated on a so-called "revolution" that has yet to appear. Does he need the power of the Presidency in order to build this movement?
just wrt this
certainly i think bernie would be a lot more effective as an organiser if he was the president, as opposed to just some guy. what i imagine him doing is showing up on the front lines of strikes and union movements, as the actual president, and saying "i stand with these people". he would also be doing stuff like taking people into canada to buy cheaper drugs, which would get vastly more press and garner much more public interest if he did it as the president
i don't know if warren is going to do that stuff. and i think that, once your radical legislative agenda has completely stalled out in the senate, that's the stuff you're going to need to do in order to keep it alive. i also think you will be genuinely surprised how many non-voters and disinterested people begin to tune in once the president goes into their community and starts up with this kind of on-the-ground organising
it's easy to assume if you're an online politics junkie that everyone is either a committed republican or a committed democrat, bar a few weird floating moderates, and that the people who don't vote and don't pay attention are not important in any significant way. but that's the biggest block of people and my sense is that if you figure out how these people think, and how to talk to them in a way that makes sense to them, you'll find there's a lot more potential there than you expected
and i have actually done this kind of community organising, and it achieved basically the results i outlined here, so it's not like i'm completely just guessing
Honest question because I haven't been looking for it and I don't have any faith that it would get reported on, does Sanders have a history of doing that sort of thing as a Senator?
Everything I hear about Tulsi Gabbard makes me like her less and less.
My distaste for her is Brobdingnagian at this point.
Whenever I start to think that Dems are being overly partisan and blinded by loyalty I remind myself about the enormous shit this thread has taken on her, and feel better.
This attitude about her really puzzles me. When she was younger she went in with her dad on anti-LGBT stuff, but has since done a complete 180 and her actual voting record on LGBTQ legislation is pristine, at least according to the HRC. She has apologized and taken full responsibility for her past. She is very conscious of how taxpayer money is spent, and has a history of trying to minimize expenditures on her own behalf. She's a combat veteran, and she is strongly against interventionist war, possibly the most progressive and anti-war candidate you could hope for. She's outspoken about issues that affect veterans and the military in general, environmentalism, m4a, criminal justice reform, and wants to see taxpayer money spent domestically on those things. She is aware of the seriousness (and reality, for that matter) of environmental racism, an important box not many can check, and strongly supports indigenous causes, something else that is very important and often overlooked. It is so important that properly acknowledging and addressing them could have made a noticeable impact on recent elections. She's a Samoan-American POC, the first to serve in Congress, and she is non-Christian, both of which would be huge firsts for a President.
You can say her campaign got off to a very weak start (it did) or that she's too green to be running for President, and she's definitely not perfect, but none of them are and the seething hatred I see of her here feels unwarranted at best. She is not a cookie-cutter Democrat, so suggesting that it's good that party loyalty isn't a factor in whether or not people hate her feels pretty ironic because she is not first an foremost a party loyalist. She has spent her time in Congress working toward some pretty important goals, and has introduced and seen pass more than one piece of legislation in service of those goals. I think I'm missing something, or maybe I'm not, which is... worse.
She was an elected member of the Hawaii House of Representatives when she venemously railed against civil unions in the mid-00s. Her anti gay positions aren't simply something she repeated from her dad in high school.
She is also not actually anti interventionist. She just wants more bombings and is open to torture but doesn't want US troops on the ground. She is an apologist for Syrian war crimes by Assad and has deep ties to harshly Islamaphobic parties in India (including Modi's). She is probably the most Islamaphobic prominent Democrat, which is also why she liked to go on FoxNews and criticize Obama for not being explicitly anti Islam
ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, ModeratorMod Emeritus
Well, she’s one of the few remaining House Dems who don’t support impeachment. This is a new distinction for Tulsi, but it’s also a major error as far as I’m concerned.
I’m willing to believe that she’s changed from her virulently anti-gay past, but even if she has, any candidate who’s against impeachment will never get my vote.
Seeing as Pelosi grew a spine like yesterday I don't really blame anyone for not bothering with this oneat this point, the Dems are way LTTP and I half expect Pelosi to be over it in another two days anyway. That has more to do with my low, low expectations of Congress Democrats and Pelosi in particular than feeling anything at all about a few people passing it up to worry about other things though. They've had quite a long time to initiate this process and haven't for anything else, unless Biden really is the line, in which case my opinion of them gets worse. Pulling all the attention toward the thing that has Biden written all over it at the start of the election season in which he is a candidate is not endearing to me. I honestly feel like if they're serious about moving forward with the impeachment process then Biden should be encouraged to withdraw his candidacy so they can make their case without him getting in the way. Or in the way of the election, for that matter.
Gabbard isn't my first choice, but I do feel like if she managed it she would work tirelessly to address a lot of the things I've mentioned that don't involve my cynicism about Congress at large, and that is meaningful to me.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
i agree with pretty much all of this, including the part where he says he basically likes warren but still has a lot of reservations about her
I think this article is pretty dumb, mostly.
I respect that his basic point is, "Sanders is my first choice, Warren is way down in 2nd place, and everybody else is totally unacceptable." But I do think a lot of his evidence is pretty weak.
A central lesson of Obama’s presidency is: You cannot succeed without a movement behind you. The approach of getting the “best and brightest” in a room together and having them make good plans will inevitably fail. We cannot elect the best policy wonk. We have to elect the best organizer. And once we accept this as a crucial criterion for selecting a candidate, Sanders and Warren start to look very different in ways that could well mean the difference between political success and political failure, even if their policies were identical.
One of Robinson's key arguments is that Bernie will be an "organizer-in-chief" who will build a powerful labor movement that will then I guess force the Republicans in Congress to do what Bernie wants, and that Warren won't.
But the truth is that Republicans won't bow to public pressure the way he's dreaming about; they'll only respond to being voted out. If Bernie's movement isn't sufficient yet to win him the Democratic nomination, I'm not sure how we should expect a Bernie general candidacy to vastly overwhelm historical partisan limits and give Democrats supermajorities in 2020. This is one of my fundamental problems with Sanders as a whole; his plans are predicated on a so-called "revolution" that has yet to appear. Does he need the power of the Presidency in order to build this movement?
Perhaps I would feel less troubled if I really felt like I could trust Elizabeth Warren. But I can so easily imagine her compromising away critical parts of the left agenda.
Robinson's reasons for imagining this are pretty weak. A lot of his argument here and elsewhere is that Warren is not a 100% unyielding zealot, but one of my worries about Bernie is that he IS a 100% unyielding zealot. I worry that Bernie is inflexible and would spend his presidency feuding with Democrats and getting nothing passed.
I don’t like to say that I can’t trust Elizabeth Warren, but I can’t. I can even see her appointing Pete Buttigieg or Kamala Harris as her VP instead of Bernie Sanders. She has done so many things that make me suspect she won’t follow through on her radical rhetoric, or will shift to the center in a general election, or won’t be willing to fight as hard as necessary. Look at that moment in the State of the Union where Donald Trump promised that America would “never be a socialist country.” Warren stood up and applauded, as Bernie sat and fumed. This was a very clear “Which side are you on?” moment. She was asked whether she was with Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump, and she said Trump. Warren faced another test in 2016: She had the opportunity to endorse Sanders, giving him a significant boost in his attempt to overthrow the corporate Democratic establishment. She chose to sit out the race. This might well have put Trump into office. I think it’s completely indefensible: It suggests a failure to appreciate how high the stakes are, and a lack of commitment to the left agenda. It was a chance to take a stand against the Democratic establishment, and it could have made a huge difference. She didn’t do it.
This whole paragraph is deeply stupid.
-Bernie would be a terrible VP for Warren and unless your hope is that Warren dies in office so that Bernie can assume the presidency, even a Bernie fan should prefer him in the Senate, yelling at the party and at Warren and continuing to try and push things to the left.
-Warren is not a socialist and clapping during that speech was not her standing with Trump, it was her preventing that moment from being a ruinous and inaccurate attack on her position. If, as Robinson actually does, you acknowledge that Warren and Sanders have very similar policies ("They're both still talking about Scandinavian social democratic policies") then this moment of symbolism really shouldn't matter to you.
-Warren's endorsement would have thrown the 2016 primary to Bernie, and Bernie would have beat Trump? I'm not getting into this in this thread but both of those ideas seem wildly optimistic to me.
-Robinson's last sentence here only seems persuasive if you view the Democratic establishment as the enemy rather than as allies.
All of these things and others (Warren used to be a Republican, which is just like being part of the Confederacy! Warren taught at Harvard Law School, which shows a "lack of commitment to justice"!) are either vague or silly as indications for why Robinson has a vague sense that Warren can't be trusted. It's the same argument Bernie tries to make a lot--because he's been ranting about the same things his entire life, nobody else can be trusted to implement leftist ideas. It feels myopic to me. The idea that anybody with less years on the case than Bernie is some kind of secret Centrist Manchurian Candidate is absurd purity testing, an argument concocted to explain why Bernie is better rather than an earnestly held belief independent of his candidacy.
(Also: I realize this might not persuade many people, but to me it’s an important piece of evidence. Warren’s daughter, with whom she collaborated on The Two-Income Trap and an unfinished novel about Harvard Law School, is a former health industry executive and McKinsey management consultant. There is a hesitation to hold people accountable for the deeds of their family members—any child can turn out to be an Alex P. Keaton—but I think Warren moves in a world where it is not considered shameful to be an insurance executive or McKinsey consultant, and I worry that nobody from such a world will ever have the guts necessary to fight the insurance industry to the death. I would bet a considerable amount of money that Warren will never make a real effort to abolish the industry that her daughter and co-author is so closely tied to.)
I don't even have the energy to go through the rest of this, because it's increasingly Gish Gallop, as Robinson throws whatever he can think of on the pile. Native American scandal! The press is unfairly on her side! (huh?) She said something weird about Israel once! She's against national rent control and therefore will compromise on everything!
The article feels like it proceeds from two assumptions:
1, Bernie will not only win but succeed at everything he promises, because reasons
2, Warren won't actually enact big structural change because she's ever so slightly to the right of Bernie and also a secret racist Republican, you can't trust her
It's an attempt to turn vague hunches (my vague hunches have been right before!, Robinson crows) and unexamined "evidence" into a serious attack on Warren, but it never seems to add up to anything real or coherent.
There's so many things in there that are just vague guilt by association or the like. "She worked at Harvard Law School!" "Her daughter worked in the consulting!" It's really revealing about what's behind the whole argument.
It begins with the premise that Warren is bad. Presumably, based on the rest of the article and other pieces, because she's not Sanders. Then it just basically grasps for anything it can find, even the nonsensical, and throws it at the wall, hoping one of the million attacks will stick with the reader.
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ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, ModeratorMod Emeritus
Everything I hear about Tulsi Gabbard makes me like her less and less.
My distaste for her is Brobdingnagian at this point.
Whenever I start to think that Dems are being overly partisan and blinded by loyalty I remind myself about the enormous shit this thread has taken on her, and feel better.
This attitude about her really puzzles me. When she was younger she went in with her dad on anti-LGBT stuff, but has since done a complete 180 and her actual voting record on LGBTQ legislation is pristine, at least according to the HRC. She has apologized and taken full responsibility for her past. She is very conscious of how taxpayer money is spent, and has a history of trying to minimize expenditures on her own behalf. She's a combat veteran, and she is strongly against interventionist war, possibly the most progressive and anti-war candidate you could hope for. She's outspoken about issues that affect veterans and the military in general, environmentalism, m4a, criminal justice reform, and wants to see taxpayer money spent domestically on those things. She is aware of the seriousness (and reality, for that matter) of environmental racism, an important box not many can check, and strongly supports indigenous causes, something else that is very important and often overlooked. It is so important that properly acknowledging and addressing them could have made a noticeable impact on recent elections. She's a Samoan-American POC, the first to serve in Congress, and she is non-Christian, both of which would be huge firsts for a President.
You can say her campaign got off to a very weak start (it did) or that she's too green to be running for President, and she's definitely not perfect, but none of them are and the seething hatred I see of her here feels unwarranted at best. She is not a cookie-cutter Democrat, so suggesting that it's good that party loyalty isn't a factor in whether or not people hate her feels pretty ironic because she is not first an foremost a party loyalist. She has spent her time in Congress working toward some pretty important goals, and has introduced and seen pass more than one piece of legislation in service of those goals. I think I'm missing something, or maybe I'm not, which is... worse.
She was an elected member of the Hawaii House of Representatives when she venemously railed against civil unions in the mid-00s. Her anti gay positions aren't simply something she repeated from her dad in high school.
She is also not actually anti interventionist. She just wants more bombings and is open to torture but doesn't want US troops on the ground. She is an apologist for Syrian war crimes by Assad and has deep ties to harshly Islamaphobic parties in India (including Modi's). She is probably the most Islamaphobic prominent Democrat, which is also why she liked to go on FoxNews and criticize Obama for not being explicitly anti Islam
I have to say, I am deeply suspicious of some of those sources. I'm not really willing to take too much from an article that sources Breitbart, and some of those link chains lead to articles written for the same publication, the one author praising her foreign policy and then a few months later denouncing it when literally nothing about it had changed except the person in Office. While I don't doubt there is some truth there, the source is not... ideal.
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
I was very unhappy with Gabbard's response to Barr's letter, and later to the redacted Mueller report. She repeated the lie that Mueller had found "no collusion" and even went so far as to say Trump had been "found not guilty" of collusion.
Being the favorite dem candidate of the Russian social media machine also isn't great.
Robinson’s article illustrates my biggest political criticism of Bernie—that he isn’t creating a movement, but a cult of personality.
Robinson, and most Bernie supporters, admit that Warren’s policies are virtually identical. Despite the indication that Bernie met his ostensible goal—forcing the Democratic Party to the left—some of his supporters attack her at every turn. These attacks are often personal, occasionally toxic, and their thrust seems to be less “we support these policies/philosophies because [reason]” and more “only Bernie can save us.”
That’s why I think his presidency would be potentially disastrous. He built his national image on attacking other Democrats. That won’t chance just because he took office, and I could see that contributing to losing ground in the House in 2022.
I've been wondering lately "If the Working Families Party had endorsed Sanders, would Warren supporters have sent them death and rape and racist threats?".
Everything I hear about Tulsi Gabbard makes me like her less and less.
My distaste for her is Brobdingnagian at this point.
Whenever I start to think that Dems are being overly partisan and blinded by loyalty I remind myself about the enormous shit this thread has taken on her, and feel better.
This attitude about her really puzzles me. When she was younger she went in with her dad on anti-LGBT stuff, but has since done a complete 180 and her actual voting record on LGBTQ legislation is pristine, at least according to the HRC. She has apologized and taken full responsibility for her past. She is very conscious of how taxpayer money is spent, and has a history of trying to minimize expenditures on her own behalf. She's a combat veteran, and she is strongly against interventionist war, possibly the most progressive and anti-war candidate you could hope for. She's outspoken about issues that affect veterans and the military in general, environmentalism, m4a, criminal justice reform, and wants to see taxpayer money spent domestically on those things. She is aware of the seriousness (and reality, for that matter) of environmental racism, an important box not many can check, and strongly supports indigenous causes, something else that is very important and often overlooked. It is so important that properly acknowledging and addressing them could have made a noticeable impact on recent elections. She's a Samoan-American POC, the first to serve in Congress, and she is non-Christian, both of which would be huge firsts for a President.
You can say her campaign got off to a very weak start (it did) or that she's too green to be running for President, and she's definitely not perfect, but none of them are and the seething hatred I see of her here feels unwarranted at best. She is not a cookie-cutter Democrat, so suggesting that it's good that party loyalty isn't a factor in whether or not people hate her feels pretty ironic because she is not first an foremost a party loyalist. She has spent her time in Congress working toward some pretty important goals, and has introduced and seen pass more than one piece of legislation in service of those goals. I think I'm missing something, or maybe I'm not, which is... worse.
Her history on LGBT rights is entirely disqualifying for me, and I haven't seen her do enough to make me begin to risk trusting her personally. A positive score from HRC doesn't exactly do it for me since I still side eye that organization for their historical treatment of the T in LGBT.
To be blunt, I am a bit tired of watching politicians waffle back and forth on if I should be a person being the best I can hope for. It always seems to hide the series of policies that will at best ignore all the shit that is going down, or at worst encourage it. If the Democratic party as a whole could actually embrace the community I would be a lot less reluctant to vote for any of them. A Republican who says he likes things as they are isn't different from a Democrat that will do nothing to change it outside of lip service. If it's not enthusiastic support then I just can't be fucking bothered anymore. I have been burned too many times.
This leads me back to Gabbard's current biggest problem in my eyes. The rhetoric for opposing impeachment is that it's too divisive. Unfortunately for me, my existence is extremely politically divisive. In order for me to have any rights at all it must involve pissing off an extremely vocal set of bigots that have elected a lot of politicians. It will be way more divisive than this open and shut case of corruption.
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ceresWhen the last moon is cast over the last star of morningAnd the future has past without even a last desperate warningRegistered User, ModeratorMod Emeritus
edited September 2019
She's also strongly in favor of paper ballots, so I would think that would help with election security against Russia and the like. I definitely take issue with some of her stances, but some of the others are pretty great. I would definitely prefer her to Biden, who is about to clean up thanks to this whole thing. Not only is he a candidate soaking up headlines right now, I'm concerned that voting for him will become the way to show it to the GOP, and then we've got Biden as our candidate, wheeee. This definitely feels like a very carefully chosen battle, and like I said, I take more issue with the idea of all that in favor of a candidate who will keep killing all the people overseas and also change nothing for the better here.
edit: I'm not concerned that the whole thing is divisive, I'm concerned that it will skew things heavily toward a united front in favor of this one candidate I really don't like.
ceres on
And it seems like all is dying, and would leave the world to mourn
Everything I hear about Tulsi Gabbard makes me like her less and less.
My distaste for her is Brobdingnagian at this point.
Whenever I start to think that Dems are being overly partisan and blinded by loyalty I remind myself about the enormous shit this thread has taken on her, and feel better.
This attitude about her really puzzles me. When she was younger she went in with her dad on anti-LGBT stuff, but has since done a complete 180 and her actual voting record on LGBTQ legislation is pristine, at least according to the HRC. She has apologized and taken full responsibility for her past. She is very conscious of how taxpayer money is spent, and has a history of trying to minimize expenditures on her own behalf. She's a combat veteran, and she is strongly against interventionist war, possibly the most progressive and anti-war candidate you could hope for. She's outspoken about issues that affect veterans and the military in general, environmentalism, m4a, criminal justice reform, and wants to see taxpayer money spent domestically on those things. She is aware of the seriousness (and reality, for that matter) of environmental racism, an important box not many can check, and strongly supports indigenous causes, something else that is very important and often overlooked. It is so important that properly acknowledging and addressing them could have made a noticeable impact on recent elections. She's a Samoan-American POC, the first to serve in Congress, and she is non-Christian, both of which would be huge firsts for a President.
You can say her campaign got off to a very weak start (it did) or that she's too green to be running for President, and she's definitely not perfect, but none of them are and the seething hatred I see of her here feels unwarranted at best. She is not a cookie-cutter Democrat, so suggesting that it's good that party loyalty isn't a factor in whether or not people hate her feels pretty ironic because she is not first an foremost a party loyalist. She has spent her time in Congress working toward some pretty important goals, and has introduced and seen pass more than one piece of legislation in service of those goals. I think I'm missing something, or maybe I'm not, which is... worse.
She was an elected member of the Hawaii House of Representatives when she venemously railed against civil unions in the mid-00s. Her anti gay positions aren't simply something she repeated from her dad in high school.
She is also not actually anti interventionist. She just wants more bombings and is open to torture but doesn't want US troops on the ground. She is an apologist for Syrian war crimes by Assad and has deep ties to harshly Islamaphobic parties in India (including Modi's). She is probably the most Islamaphobic prominent Democrat, which is also why she liked to go on FoxNews and criticize Obama for not being explicitly anti Islam
I have to say, I am deeply suspicious of some of those sources. I'm not really willing to take too much from an article that sources Breitbart, and some of those link chains lead to articles written for the same publication, the one author praising her foreign policy and then a few months later denouncing it when literally nothing about it had changed except the person in Office. While I don't doubt there is some truth there, the source is not... ideal.
But in the following years, Gabbard staked out foreign policy positions that shocked her allies. She joined Republicans in demanding that President Obama use the term “radical Islam.” She was the member of Congress most willing to advocate for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. She dubbed herself a “hawk” on terrorism. Reporters documented worrying ties to anti-LGBTQ groups — including one run by her father — and anti-Muslim Hindu nationalists.
Gabbard has defenses of these positions, some more persuasive than others. She seems to have sincerely changed her mind on LGBTQ issues, defends her position on terrorism as a necessary response to the serious threat from jihadism to the United States, and argues that her outreach to the Syrian government is part of an effort to open up space for a peaceful solution to the conflict.
As early as January 2015, she started going on every cable channel that would have her — including Fox News — and bashing Obama’s policy on terrorism. She sounded indistinguishable from a Republican presidential candidate.
“What is so frustrating ... is that our administration refuses to recognize who our enemy is,” she said in a January 2015 interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “And unless and until that happens, then it’s impossible to come up with a strategy to defeat that enemy. We have to recognize that this is about radical Islam.”
The problem with this argument, according to both the Obama administration and most terrorism experts, is that “radical Islam” paints with too broad a brush. The term implies that jihadist militants are part of a unified ideological movement rather than a series of discrete groups that are often at war with each other. It’s also insulting to the vast majority of Muslims around the world. President George W. Bush’s counterterrorism team refused to use it for these reasons.
And on Hindu nationalism:
In January, the Intercept, a left-aligned antiwar outlet, published a deeply reported exposé on Gabbard’s ties to Hindu nationalists. Gabbard has long supported Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, an anti-Islam right-winger who had previously been barred from entering the US due to being personally implicated in deadly anti-Muslim riots. In turn, American Hindu supporters of Modi had become some of Gabbard’s biggest donors — including some disturbingly Islamophobic groups.
“Hindu-Americans have supported Gabbard since the start of her political career, and that support has increased substantially since Modi’s election, much of it coming from Hindu nationalists,” Soumya Shankar writes in the Intercept piece. “Dozens of Gabbard’s donors have either expressed strong sympathy with or have ties to the Sangh Parivar — a network of religious, political, paramilitary, and student groups that subscribe to the Hindu supremacist, exclusionary ideology known as Hindutva.”
warren support seems like much more of a """cult of personality""" to me than sanders support, but also all arguments about cults of personality are goofy bullshit
She's also strongly in favor of paper ballots, so I would think that would help with election security against Russia and the like. I definitely take issue with some of her stances, but some of the others are pretty great. I would definitely prefer her to Biden, who is about to clean up thanks to this whole thing. Not only is he a candidate soaking up headlines right now, I'm concerned that voting for him will become the way to show it to the GOP, and then we've got Biden as our candidate, wheeee. This definitely feels like a very carefully chosen battle, and like I said, I take more issue with the idea of all that in favor of a candidate who will keep killing all the people overseas and also change nothing for the better here.
edit: I'm not concerned that the whole thing is divisive, I'm concerned that it will skew things heavily toward a united front in favor of this one candidate I really don't like.
Huh??? All recent polls show Biden falling and Warren surging.
It would be wonderful for the president to join picket lines and drive people to canadian pharmacies, it's all I want a politician to do, but Bernie hasn't really talked about doing that as president
She's also strongly in favor of paper ballots, so I would think that would help with election security against Russia and the like. I definitely take issue with some of her stances, but some of the others are pretty great. I would definitely prefer her to Biden, who is about to clean up thanks to this whole thing. Not only is he a candidate soaking up headlines right now, I'm concerned that voting for him will become the way to show it to the GOP, and then we've got Biden as our candidate, wheeee. This definitely feels like a very carefully chosen battle, and like I said, I take more issue with the idea of all that in favor of a candidate who will keep killing all the people overseas and also change nothing for the better here.
edit: I'm not concerned that the whole thing is divisive, I'm concerned that it will skew things heavily toward a united front in favor of this one candidate I really don't like.
Huh??? All recent polls show Biden falling and Warren surging.
All this recent poll stuff is still early, and the real margin of error is likely huge. Polls will start meaning something real once voting results start coming in.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
warren support seems like much more of a """cult of personality""" to me than sanders support, but also all arguments about cults of personality are goofy bullshit
This a bit "no u", isn't it? Others have stated their thinking Sanders has more of that feel because of the arguments being made re: former employers, family connections, etc; rather than on policy.
While I don't agree that Sanders is necessarily a cult of personality since he is truly putting forward good ideas, at least state why you actually flip the term towards Warren please.
[quore]
I've been wondering lately "If the Working Families Party had endorsed Sanders, would Warren supporters have sent them death and rape and racist threats?".[/quote]
Warren supporters are still going with the Lolita Defense for Bill and still sending rape and death threats to the women who accused Franken.
She's also strongly in favor of paper ballots, so I would think that would help with election security against Russia and the like. I definitely take issue with some of her stances, but some of the others are pretty great. I would definitely prefer her to Biden, who is about to clean up thanks to this whole thing. Not only is he a candidate soaking up headlines right now, I'm concerned that voting for him will become the way to show it to the GOP, and then we've got Biden as our candidate, wheeee. This definitely feels like a very carefully chosen battle, and like I said, I take more issue with the idea of all that in favor of a candidate who will keep killing all the people overseas and also change nothing for the better here.
edit: I'm not concerned that the whole thing is divisive, I'm concerned that it will skew things heavily toward a united front in favor of this one candidate I really don't like.
Huh??? All recent polls show Biden falling and Warren surging.
All this recent poll stuff is still early, and the real margin of error is likely huge. Polls will start meaning something real once voting results start coming in.
I think there's some kind of expectation that Democratic primary voters might go "Poor Joe Biden, maligned by the President who fears him, we should support him, cause fuck what Trump wants."
Sort of like the leftist version of doing something that you either don't agree with, or don't care about, specifically to "own the libs!".
So, if Biden gets a significant jump because of this, at the expense of Warren's momentum, it significantly increases his chance at the nomination.
I don't think that "own the other party" is even close to as impactful as it is on the right, but I can see why people might be concerned.
I mean, I'd probably go for Tulsi over Biden, I guess?
But it's not any sort of real concern, because she's not going to win the nomination.
She's a former hard right-winger who has been moving left. That's great, I can identify with that. But she's nowhere near there yet, and her coziness with Assad and favorability from Putin's trolls makes her still a liability. She needs to bring her views of bombing campaigns and the like in line with her (relatively new) anti-war claims. That's the kind of sharp internal contradiction, on what she's using as her main platform and justification for running, that betrays a hard-right past that has not been fully reconciled.
At best, this Presidential run is about 8 years too early. If in 8 years she's as different from now as now vs 8-15 years ago, plus has some notable leadership credentials to show, I could see her being a strong candidate.
Fleur de Alys on
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
It would be nice to have a president not devoted to the violent suppression of the left for the first time since Lincoln.
The fact that all of the Nixon era price and wage controls, and all the other statutory powers of the executive are still law is wild, but just having a Democrat who isn't eager to pretend that Iran broke the treaty would be an amazing move.
Modi support alone is entirely disqualifying for me, from a foreign policy perspective. It was obvious he was bad news from the start, if you pay attention to signs of demagoguery, but the situation in India is skewing closer to genocide every week and the Kashmir lockdown is now two months old. By now this really should horrify anyone even vaguely concerned about a rise in fascist movements.
I don't know why I'm surprised former CIA Agent, Valerie Plame publicly expressed her desire to catalog, highlight, and shame Jewish people, but uh, holy shit please research candidates andfigures instead of the Democratic Party instead of voting blue no matter who.ndfigures in
She's also strongly in favor of paper ballots, so I would think that would help with election security against Russia and the like. I definitely take issue with some of her stances, but some of the others are pretty great. I would definitely prefer her to Biden, who is about to clean up thanks to this whole thing. Not only is he a candidate soaking up headlines right now, I'm concerned that voting for him will become the way to show it to the GOP, and then we've got Biden as our candidate, wheeee. This definitely feels like a very carefully chosen battle, and like I said, I take more issue with the idea of all that in favor of a candidate who will keep killing all the people overseas and also change nothing for the better here.
edit: I'm not concerned that the whole thing is divisive, I'm concerned that it will skew things heavily toward a united front in favor of this one candidate I really don't like.
Huh??? All recent polls show Biden falling and Warren surging.
All this recent poll stuff is still early, and the real margin of error is likely huge. Polls will start meaning something real once voting results start coming in.
I think there's some kind of expectation that Democratic primary voters might go "Poor Joe Biden, maligned by the President who fears him, we should support him, cause fuck what Trump wants."
Sort of like the leftist version of doing something that you either don't agree with, or don't care about, specifically to "own the libs!".
So, if Biden gets a significant jump because of this, at the expense of Warren's momentum, it significantly increases his chance at the nomination.
I don't think that "own the other party" is even close to as impactful as it is on the right, but I can see why people might be concerned.
I've never seen compassion be a major factor in elections. If a candidate is having a hard time, we usually let them have a hard time and judge them for it. Moreover, I don't think the polls are accurate enough to detect such an effect if it exists.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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i'm kind of less interested in advocating for sanders, at the moment, than i am in helping to define the difference between a liberal position and a leftist one. i think a lot of the conversations we had on this forum would flow better if we had a better collective understanding that these are actually very different things
the basic difference imo is that leftism sees the fundamental opposition of politics as between labour and capital, whereas liberalism - even left liberalism - tends to accept the hayekian framework of business vs. government, thinking that the central question of politics is about how much power the market should have vs. how much power the state should have
I think we have a thread for that.
https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/228893/defining-the-left-in-the-usa
just wrt this
certainly i think bernie would be a lot more effective as an organiser if he was the president, as opposed to just some guy. what i imagine him doing is showing up on the front lines of strikes and union movements, as the actual president, and saying "i stand with these people". he would also be doing stuff like taking people into canada to buy cheaper drugs, which would get vastly more press and garner much more public interest if he did it as the president
i don't know if warren is going to do that stuff. and i think that, once your radical legislative agenda has completely stalled out in the senate, that's the stuff you're going to need to do in order to keep it alive. i also think you will be genuinely surprised how many non-voters and disinterested people begin to tune in once the president goes into their community and starts up with this kind of on-the-ground organising
it's easy to assume if you're an online politics junkie that everyone is either a committed republican or a committed democrat, bar a few weird floating moderates, and that the people who don't vote and don't pay attention are not important in any significant way. but that's the biggest block of people and my sense is that if you figure out how these people think, and how to talk to them in a way that makes sense to them, you'll find there's a lot more potential there than you expected
and i have actually done this kind of community organising, and it achieved basically the results i outlined here, so it's not like i'm completely just guessing
Robinson, and most Bernie supporters, admit that Warren’s policies are virtually identical. Despite the indication that Bernie met his ostensible goal—forcing the Democratic Party to the left—some of his supporters attack her at every turn. These attacks are often personal, occasionally toxic, and their thrust seems to be less “we support these policies/philosophies because [reason]” and more “only Bernie can save us.”
That’s why I think his presidency would be potentially disastrous. He built his national image on attacking other Democrats. That won’t chance just because he took office, and I could see that contributing to losing ground in the House in 2022.
This attitude about her really puzzles me. When she was younger she went in with her dad on anti-LGBT stuff, but has since done a complete 180 and her actual voting record on LGBTQ legislation is pristine, at least according to the HRC. She has apologized and taken full responsibility for her past. She is very conscious of how taxpayer money is spent, and has a history of trying to minimize expenditures on her own behalf. She's a combat veteran, and she is strongly against interventionist war, possibly the most progressive and anti-war candidate you could hope for. She's outspoken about issues that affect veterans and the military in general, environmentalism, m4a, criminal justice reform, and wants to see taxpayer money spent domestically on those things. She is aware of the seriousness (and reality, for that matter) of environmental racism, an important box not many can check, and strongly supports indigenous causes, something else that is very important and often overlooked. It is so important that properly acknowledging and addressing them could have made a noticeable impact on recent elections. She's a Samoan-American POC, the first to serve in Congress, and she is non-Christian, both of which would be huge firsts for a President.
You can say her campaign got off to a very weak start (it did) or that she's too green to be running for President, and she's definitely not perfect, but none of them are and the seething hatred I see of her here feels unwarranted at best. She is not a cookie-cutter Democrat, so suggesting that it's good that party loyalty isn't a factor in whether or not people hate her feels pretty ironic because she is not first an foremost a party loyalist. She has spent her time in Congress working toward some pretty important goals, and has introduced and seen pass more than one piece of legislation in service of those goals. I think I'm missing something, or maybe I'm not, which is... worse.
I’m willing to believe that she’s changed from her virulently anti-gay past, but even if she has, any candidate who’s against impeachment will never get my vote.
There's a reason why I think despite their policies being similar Warren has the Can-Do attitude that sells it way better than Sander's Angry Grandpa persona.
I’d rather have Warren and Bernie debating on the merits of their individual leftward plans than Warren and Biden debating on if a leftward plan is what this country even needs vs “returning to norms.”
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Sanders actual campaign suggests a weak ability to put together a strong Administration. His staff are inevitably blamed for their toxic behavior but he hired them. Other candidates don't bring on those kinda of personalities but Sanders does out of preference or desperation and neither suggests a well staffed Administration(perhaps why the article scoffs at "best and brightest")
In endorsements he is running 6th using the 538 methodology. All the endorsements are either from his small home state or they are DNC members who got that position as Sanders representatives. The one exception seems to be the President of the Maine Senate who was formerly a Republican when he first ran and keeps losing house primaries
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-endorsements/democratic-primary/#BernieSanders
A big part of any such movement would require swaying elected officials and he isn't doing that. Other than being charismatic or having good ideas, the other way people do that is getting people elected or showing electoral clout.
In 2018 Sanders did the opposite. His backed candidates did poorly in a wave election. The PAC he set up backed candidates who did poorly in a wave year. Both lost most primaries and when they won, even in competitive districts, they did worse than the wave and partisan lean would have predicted.
And finally he is not winning. He's a distant third. It's a variation on the electability argument but that not only will he get elected but he'll create a huge groundswell etc. But you can't credibly make that argument when two candidates beat you. If your case relies on being immensely popular you better be winning
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
I'll be honest, I don't know much about the good works/policies of Tulsi Gabbard. I checked up based on your callout, and yes, she's done some admirable things.
But prior to this, I really only knew two things.
1) Her position on impeachment, both in the abstract, and with regards this President specifically.
2) Her position on Assad and Syria.
And regardless of her positions on the things I like, I consider both positions MASSIVELY negative, if not disqualifying, for the Presidential nomination.
Honest question because I haven't been looking for it and I don't have any faith that it would get reported on, does Sanders have a history of doing that sort of thing as a Senator?
She was an elected member of the Hawaii House of Representatives when she venemously railed against civil unions in the mid-00s. Her anti gay positions aren't simply something she repeated from her dad in high school.
She is also not actually anti interventionist. She just wants more bombings and is open to torture but doesn't want US troops on the ground. She is an apologist for Syrian war crimes by Assad and has deep ties to harshly Islamaphobic parties in India (including Modi's). She is probably the most Islamaphobic prominent Democrat, which is also why she liked to go on FoxNews and criticize Obama for not being explicitly anti Islam
https://www.thenation.com/article/tulsi-gabbard-president-foreign-islam/
Edit
This is not an anti interventionist
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Seeing as Pelosi grew a spine like yesterday I don't really blame anyone for not bothering with this oneat this point, the Dems are way LTTP and I half expect Pelosi to be over it in another two days anyway. That has more to do with my low, low expectations of Congress Democrats and Pelosi in particular than feeling anything at all about a few people passing it up to worry about other things though. They've had quite a long time to initiate this process and haven't for anything else, unless Biden really is the line, in which case my opinion of them gets worse. Pulling all the attention toward the thing that has Biden written all over it at the start of the election season in which he is a candidate is not endearing to me. I honestly feel like if they're serious about moving forward with the impeachment process then Biden should be encouraged to withdraw his candidacy so they can make their case without him getting in the way. Or in the way of the election, for that matter.
Gabbard isn't my first choice, but I do feel like if she managed it she would work tirelessly to address a lot of the things I've mentioned that don't involve my cynicism about Congress at large, and that is meaningful to me.
There's so many things in there that are just vague guilt by association or the like. "She worked at Harvard Law School!" "Her daughter worked in the consulting!" It's really revealing about what's behind the whole argument.
It begins with the premise that Warren is bad. Presumably, based on the rest of the article and other pieces, because she's not Sanders. Then it just basically grasps for anything it can find, even the nonsensical, and throws it at the wall, hoping one of the million attacks will stick with the reader.
I have to say, I am deeply suspicious of some of those sources. I'm not really willing to take too much from an article that sources Breitbart, and some of those link chains lead to articles written for the same publication, the one author praising her foreign policy and then a few months later denouncing it when literally nothing about it had changed except the person in Office. While I don't doubt there is some truth there, the source is not... ideal.
Being the favorite dem candidate of the Russian social media machine also isn't great.
I've been wondering lately "If the Working Families Party had endorsed Sanders, would Warren supporters have sent them death and rape and racist threats?".
Her history on LGBT rights is entirely disqualifying for me, and I haven't seen her do enough to make me begin to risk trusting her personally. A positive score from HRC doesn't exactly do it for me since I still side eye that organization for their historical treatment of the T in LGBT.
To be blunt, I am a bit tired of watching politicians waffle back and forth on if I should be a person being the best I can hope for. It always seems to hide the series of policies that will at best ignore all the shit that is going down, or at worst encourage it. If the Democratic party as a whole could actually embrace the community I would be a lot less reluctant to vote for any of them. A Republican who says he likes things as they are isn't different from a Democrat that will do nothing to change it outside of lip service. If it's not enthusiastic support then I just can't be fucking bothered anymore. I have been burned too many times.
This leads me back to Gabbard's current biggest problem in my eyes. The rhetoric for opposing impeachment is that it's too divisive. Unfortunately for me, my existence is extremely politically divisive. In order for me to have any rights at all it must involve pissing off an extremely vocal set of bigots that have elected a lot of politicians. It will be way more divisive than this open and shut case of corruption.
edit: I'm not concerned that the whole thing is divisive, I'm concerned that it will skew things heavily toward a united front in favor of this one candidate I really don't like.
I mean, that's her tweet right there. And Gabbard's appearances on Fox News are not a secret. Here's something from Vox on her with references to her stance on Islam:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/16/18182114/tulsi-gabbard-2020-president-campaign-policies
And on Hindu nationalism:
Huh??? All recent polls show Biden falling and Warren surging.
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It doesn't stop people from getting deregistered, it doesn't stop hacking and stealing documents, it doesn't stop social media influence.
All this recent poll stuff is still early, and the real margin of error is likely huge. Polls will start meaning something real once voting results start coming in.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
This a bit "no u", isn't it? Others have stated their thinking Sanders has more of that feel because of the arguments being made re: former employers, family connections, etc; rather than on policy.
While I don't agree that Sanders is necessarily a cult of personality since he is truly putting forward good ideas, at least state why you actually flip the term towards Warren please.
I've been wondering lately "If the Working Families Party had endorsed Sanders, would Warren supporters have sent them death and rape and racist threats?".[/quote]
Warren supporters are still going with the Lolita Defense for Bill and still sending rape and death threats to the women who accused Franken.
I think there's some kind of expectation that Democratic primary voters might go "Poor Joe Biden, maligned by the President who fears him, we should support him, cause fuck what Trump wants."
Sort of like the leftist version of doing something that you either don't agree with, or don't care about, specifically to "own the libs!".
So, if Biden gets a significant jump because of this, at the expense of Warren's momentum, it significantly increases his chance at the nomination.
I don't think that "own the other party" is even close to as impactful as it is on the right, but I can see why people might be concerned.
But it's not any sort of real concern, because she's not going to win the nomination.
She's a former hard right-winger who has been moving left. That's great, I can identify with that. But she's nowhere near there yet, and her coziness with Assad and favorability from Putin's trolls makes her still a liability. She needs to bring her views of bombing campaigns and the like in line with her (relatively new) anti-war claims. That's the kind of sharp internal contradiction, on what she's using as her main platform and justification for running, that betrays a hard-right past that has not been fully reconciled.
At best, this Presidential run is about 8 years too early. If in 8 years she's as different from now as now vs 8-15 years ago, plus has some notable leadership credentials to show, I could see her being a strong candidate.
The fact that all of the Nixon era price and wage controls, and all the other statutory powers of the executive are still law is wild, but just having a Democrat who isn't eager to pretend that Iran broke the treaty would be an amazing move.
I've never seen compassion be a major factor in elections. If a candidate is having a hard time, we usually let them have a hard time and judge them for it. Moreover, I don't think the polls are accurate enough to detect such an effect if it exists.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.