I wanted to briefly share my opinions of the candidates as a progressive/leftist/liberal or whatever you might call me, and why I believe @Joebiden is the best Democratic nominee at this critical time.
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@JoeBiden I also want to be clear my opinions here are not meant to be disparaging or divisive against any other Democratic candidates. We are in the primary, so now is not the time to be shouting #VoteBlueNoMatterWho at each other before a nominee has actually been chosen.
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@JoeBiden Firstly, I agree with just about everything @BernieSanders advocates. In a different world I might have been comfortable calling myself some kind of socialist. But as the Dem nominee there’s a big, big problem...he won't be able to actually achieve any of those things. 3/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders My ultimate goal, like Joe, is to help Democrats build the political power necessary to move us closer to a more progressive, egalitarian society. It is why I choose to identify as a Democrat before anything else—I am not an independent, and I am not a democratic socialist. 4/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders I like @PeteButtigieg personally very much & I think he has a bright future, but now isn’t his time for various reasons. I would probably support him the next time he runs for president despite whatever policy differences, for reasons that I hope are made clear by this thread. 5/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders @PeteButtigieg I don’t particularly care for @amyklobuchar policywise or personally. I mean nothing against her as a candidate, and I'm aware of the optics of someone like me expressing such an opinion about any moderate. But truth be told, I just don’t think about her that much. 6/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders @PeteButtigieg @amyklobuchar I do personally like @ewarren and agree with most of her policies, but she has the same problem Sanders does. That is, the predictable midterm backlash in 2022 would easily wash away or halt anything she could possibly accomplish before then, just like it did to Barack Obama. 7/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders @PeteButtigieg @amyklobuchar @ewarren I don’t like Michael Bloomberg, personally or otherwise. The less said about him, the better. 8/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders @PeteButtigieg @amyklobuchar @ewarren Joe Biden, however, is different. He’s a good guy sure, but arguments of moral character aside, there is one absolutely critical thing he brings to the table that objectively no one else does... 9/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders @PeteButtigieg @amyklobuchar @ewarren ...Joe Biden stands a good chance to bring with him the necessary Senate seats in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Colorado, and Maine that we need in order to get any meaningfully progressive legislation actually passed. 10/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders @PeteButtigieg @amyklobuchar @ewarren Although I’m much more to the left of Biden's "moderate" policy preferences, I also believe that with a Dem congress, he will actually achieve vastly more progressive legislation than any other Democratic candidate possibly could. 11/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders @PeteButtigieg @amyklobuchar @ewarren The reason that Joe Biden specifically could enact these progressive milestones while others couldn't is bc that legislation would be driven by the entire party in Congress, not the one person in the Oval Office--and the Democratic party has very clear progressive priorities. 12/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders @PeteButtigieg @amyklobuchar @ewarren For example, Biden has said he’s against recreational marijuana...but does anyone think if Dems determined it could get such a thing past GOP opposition and onto his desk, that he’d veto it? Of course not, he'd do what the collective wisdom of our party wanted him to do. 13/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders @PeteButtigieg @amyklobuchar @ewarren Regardless of his personal opinion, Biden would sign that legislation delivered from a Democratic Congress because that’s exactly who he is and who he has always been—a consensus builder and team player who always cares for the party above himself. 14/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders @PeteButtigieg @amyklobuchar @ewarren Joe Biden had been a Senator for decades, and he understands the harsh reality that sometimes in order to actually get things enacted that you want, you have to first *win* the negotiation by being able to effectively pretend you don’t really want it. 15/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders @PeteButtigieg @amyklobuchar @ewarren Joe has inadvertently given away the nature of this game at least a few times in recent history. For example, the time he spilled the beans on his support for gay marriage before President Obama was prepared to announce it himself. 16/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders @PeteButtigieg @amyklobuchar @ewarren And of course, what he did to advance Obamacare--using his Senate connections to forge the most progressive healthcare legislation in 40 years--and the colorful way he described the, let’s say, “magnitude” of the deal. To say anything more was possible is to rewrite history. 17/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders @PeteButtigieg @amyklobuchar @ewarren No one has played the right political games more effectively than Joe Biden—least of all Bernie Sanders, who while also having been a Senator for several decades, has sponsored virtually no major legislation I am aware of that has actually been enacted into law. 18/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders @PeteButtigieg @amyklobuchar @ewarren The unfortunate reason for this is exactly why young people are so enamored with Sanders today and why older voters prefer Biden so strongly—instead of Sanders doing what he needed to do to get the legislation he supported passed under the actual rules of his governing body...19/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders @PeteButtigieg @amyklobuchar @ewarren ...Senator Sanders was content to merely declare his uncompromising support for legislation the country had no appetite for and then reveling in the public perception he was an “outsider” being thwarted by “the establishment” when the legislation inevitably failed. 20/
@JoeBiden @BernieSanders @PeteButtigieg @amyklobuchar @ewarren I support @JoeBiden because I’m tired of squandering my hope for a better world on leaders who are not interested in doing what they have to do to make that world a reality.
