I feel like so many Bernie people don’t understand this. I think at least Bernie would fight harder for more, but *he would have to compromise*. A *lot*.
Bernie people jumping on board because they feel the Bern and get all excited about REVOLUTION and don’t understand what every real activist does, which is that positive social change is almost always an uphill marathon with a ton of frustrations and very few things happen fast.
If Bernie wins you all better prepare yourselves for the notion that he’s going to end up doing what you call other people neoliberal shills for. He’s going to have to make deals and settle for less in the name of getting something done. Or he won’t get *anything* done.
Because “settling” isn’t settling for good, it’s improving your position to move forward from. It’s doing what you have to do in order to get what you really want.
So do you want those things? Do you actually want them?
Then get ready to not get them right away.
So do you want those things? Do you actually want them?
Then get ready to not get them right away.
As is my wont, I was talking to @AlexandraErin about this yesterday, and she/we noted that the thing about Biden is that while he is *not* where I want him to be on health care, and I think he’s wrong about a lot of how the health care system works—
—he’s still a step on the ladder, because he’s pushing policies that do in fact proceed from the first principle that it’s good for people to not die bankrupt on the streets and we should try to help them not do that.
The lefty Twitter people who are running around saying that anyone who doesn’t 100% support M4A wants people to do just that are wrong, stupid, and counterproductive.
What Biden has in his platform is a policy plan that *will* help people, just not anywhere near enough.
What Biden has in his platform is a policy plan that *will* help people, just not anywhere near enough.
And if he wanted people to die on the streets he wouldn’t have it at all.
If you vote for Biden in the general, what you get is someone with a really inadequate health care approach who does at least want to push in the right direction and can be pushed harder.
If you vote for Biden in the general, what you get is someone with a really inadequate health care approach who does at least want to push in the right direction and can be pushed harder.
Republicans are a death cult which wants to kill us. This is pretty simple.
We were never going to get M4A immediately. It was probably always going to take years. I think with Bernie or Warren we’d get a better starting position but that’s it.
We were never going to get M4A immediately. It was probably always going to take years. I think with Bernie or Warren we’d get a better starting position but that’s it.
Which means no matter what, if we win in 2020 the work is only beginning and we won’t get anything unless we seriously bring the pressure from all sides. The House needs to be behind it. The Senate needs to be behind it. It’s going to take a long time.
But Biden, while I think he’d need to be bullied into moving even close to as hard and as fast as he needs to, is still potentially open to being moved, and the basic fundamental ethical principle—no one should go without health care—is the right one.
It’s like @AlexandraErin has been saying: you want to make this work? Then our first job isn’t to refuse to support anyone who isn’t all in on M4A, or call them a monster who wants people to die. Our first job is to destroy the Republican party.
Then Democratic centrists become the new ideological right. Which means the ideological right has the same first principles that we do, even if they *really* don’t want to go about it in the best way. That is a terrific, promising situation to be in. Things get done.
But it doesn’t happen immediately. Even then, M4A doesn’t happen immediately. It’s slow. It’s incremental. It requires compromise.
Compromising in order to push toward the world you want isn’t a betrayal of values.
Compromising in order to push toward the world you want isn’t a betrayal of values.
At least it’s not a betrayal unless you give up after that point.
If you’re not prepared for a long, difficult, frustrating slog toward M4A even if Bernie does win, if you view him compromising as a betrayal, you need to ask yourself how much you really want what you claim.
If you’re not prepared for a long, difficult, frustrating slog toward M4A even if Bernie does win, if you view him compromising as a betrayal, you need to ask yourself how much you really want what you claim.
Yeah, this. The thing a lot of people a) don’t seem to understand and b) get furious and nasty about whenever someone points it out is that Biden’s policy platform is *amazingly* progressive compared to, say, what Obama’s was.
It doesn’t even close to satisfy me, there are a lot of problems with it, but one thing I think Biden’s proposals make extremely clear is that people like Bernie have been spectacularly successful at dragging the mainstream of the party way further left in a very short time.
Many many of the things people like Biden and Klobuchar have been saying have had me yelling aloud at screens, but even they have been running some of the most progressive campaigns in history, at least for viable candidates.
Doesn’t mean stop pushing, it means push *harder*, because we can see that *pushing really works* when someone’s theory of the ethical case at least resembles yours.
Go try that with some Republicans and lemme know how it goes.
Go try that with some Republicans and lemme know how it goes.
Oh yeah, totally. It’s my fear too. Which is why I’m mostly proceeding from the assumption/hope that we’ll elect enough Democrats that we can focus on dealing with the Joes Manchin of the world instead of the Teds Cruz.
Joe Manchin makes me beat my head bloody against a wall but he is at least not *evil*, just a huge pain in the ass.
Hey, by the way, if you don’t think the things I’m talking about you, this isn’t addressed to you. This is addressed to the people who *are* thinking and saying stuff that I’m saying not to think or say, of which there appears to be a fair number, or at least they’re really loud.
I think we can all stand to be reminded that this is going to be really hard and frustrating, even if we technically know that, but there’s assholes out there saying that anything less than M4A is enabling mass murder and people who don’t want it immediately are monsters.
If that’s not you, this isn’t about you, so no need to point out that it’s not you. You’re cool.
Oh and also I do think that even those of us who understand that M4A is going to take a long time may have a faulty understanding of exactly what it is that Biden is proposing in terms of policy. Which, as I said, isn’t perfect, but it is not in fact horrible.
