Joe Biden defense thread

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Swinging for the swing state votes.

[GreyICE]

Ah great, I see we get our pick of right-wing conservative candidates here. You know how China has elections where the CCP presents the two candidates and the voters pick one? I'm starting to feel like this election is a slightly less transparent version of that.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

She’s being vetted by Biden’s folk, but basically everyone is. News outlets decided to lead with her for whatever reason but nothing more substantive has come down the pipe.

Oh thank Hecate

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Cohen is a ghost
@skullmandible
·
11h
every time biden says something indefensibly stupid remember this is the guy the democratic party elites moved heaven and earth to ensure got the nomination instead of the guy pushing healthcare for everyone. also this happened during a worldwide epidemic we are failing to stop

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

self improvement guru
@InternetHippo
·
14h
i can remember two presidential elections in my life where the democrat's strategy was basically to point at the republican and go "cmon i suck but anything is better than THAT guy right haha" and they both lost

[Captain Crimson]

Mr. Sanders' uncompromising laser-wire focus on healthcare is to his detriment. It's the only thing they focus on. And then when he's going around trying to save the ACA in 2017 with his pivotal role played in giving the election to Mr. 45 (and he was saying shortly after he'd won that we should give him a chance and work with him, so how is that not a double standard?), it turns me off. The ACA was was never good enough for them back in 2010. What is good enough here? Healthcare is not the only issue going on with this country.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

It's literally a life-or-death issue. He has points on other things, but isn't healthcare the big issue for your mom?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Mr. Sanders' uncompromising laser-wire focus on healthcare is to his detriment. It's the only thing they focus on. And then when he's going around trying to save the ACA in 2017 with his pivotal role played in giving the election to Mr. 45 (and he was saying shortly after he'd won that we should give him a chance and work with him, so how is that not a double standard?), it turns me off. The ACA was was never good enough for them back in 2010. What is good enough here? Healthcare is not the only issue going on with this country.

That's because millions of people around the nation are uninsured and at risk in a country that should be giving health care as a right! The richest 1% have more than half the wealth while our students are straddled with enormous amounts of debt. We need to show Wall Street that the big money doesn't translate to legislation. Also the African American community is very neglected.

[Captain Crimson]

Mr. Sanders' uncompromising laser-wire focus on healthcare is to his detriment. It's the only thing they focus on. And then when he's going around trying to save the ACA in 2017 with his pivotal role played in giving the election to Mr. 45 (and he was saying shortly after he'd won that we should give him a chance and work with him, so how is that not a double standard?), it turns me off. The ACA was was never good enough for them back in 2010. What is good enough here? Healthcare is not the only issue going on with this country.

That's because millions of people around the nation are uninsured and at risk in a country that should be giving health care as a right! The richest 1% have more than half the wealth while our students are straddled with enormous amounts of debt. We need to show Wall Street that the big money doesn't translate to legislation. Also the African American community is very neglected.

As I'd said, healthcare is not the only thing going on this country, and I stand by my statement they get too laser-focused on that at the expense of all others. Like Mr. Sanders' comments that Cuba had excellent healthcare. Or that he would recommend a honeymoon to the USSR. It's how they are tone-deaf to the brutalities of dictatorships. The US is also not like these Norwegian countries, which tend to be more homogeneous cultures, not melting pots. That is why I wish we didn't have such massively overpopulated city regions. Their single-minded obsession with how the ACA wasn't good enough put Mr. 45 in office, where he began systematically chipping down at it.

[CmdrKing]

Mr. Sanders' uncompromising laser-wire focus on healthcare is to his detriment. It's the only thing they focus on. And then when he's going around trying to save the ACA in 2017 with his pivotal role played in giving the election to Mr. 45 (and he was saying shortly after he'd won that we should give him a chance and work with him, so how is that not a double standard?), it turns me off. The ACA was was never good enough for them back in 2010. What is good enough here? Healthcare is not the only issue going on with this country.

As I'd said, healthcare is not the only thing going on this country, and I stand by my statement they get too laser-focused on that at the expense of all others. Like Mr. Sanders' comments that Cuba had excellent healthcare. Or that he would recommend a honeymoon to the USSR. It's how they are tone-deaf to the brutalities of dictatorships. The US is also not like these Norwegian countries, which tend to be more homogeneous cultures, not melting pots. That is why I wish we didn't have such massively overpopulated city regions. Their single-minded obsession with how the ACA wasn't good enough put Mr. 45 in office, where he began systematically chipping down at it.

Do people actually believe this? Apart from not especially being true that bitter Sanders supporters didn't turn out for Clinton in 2016 (I did, in fact, vote for the TERF y'all nominated, and compared to the last contested election it seems that more Sanders supporters voted Clinton than Clinton supporters voted Obama https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/24/did-enough-bernie-sanders-supporters-vote-for-trump-to-cost-clinton-the-election/ ), it manages to completely miss the actual substance of Sanders and progressivism more broadly.

Like, aside from being literal life and death, y'know why people usually talk about healthcare? Because it's more obviously broken and easier to understand WHY it's broken than most of the myriad other goals of progressives or leftists. And more than that, the goals of progressives are largely unified under a desire to correct a single set of misplaced priorities and exploitative systems, so if you can get people to understand better approaches to healthcare, it is easier to explain how the same things apply in many other aspects of life.

Additionally, focusing on healthcare makes it easy to blame a small handful of bad actors rigging the system in their favor over a long stretch of time. We have other countries that didn't fall into that trap to compare with, we have countries who have moved closer to our system who are actively getting worse in real time because of it, it's easy to talk about in a very clean, politically friendly way. By which I mean avoiding the hard work, of acknowledging the ways liberal voters generally have allowed and encouraged these systems to be broken and exploited. 'cuz based on how y'all act, seems to me you're more concerned about making sure the """right""" people get helped rather than making a better, more equitable society, and the breathless defense of Biden and drive to shut down even the most obvious and necessary critiques of him, his record, and the shortcomings of his platform make it hard to believe any other conclusion.

Edit: and let's be clear- I believe that dislodging Trump and indeed the entire Republican party are a necessary step if we wish to preserve electoral politics as a valid avenue of reform in this country. I've no intent of fucking off and not voting just because both nominees are equally likely to deny my basic humanity and let their base strip away my rights. But dislodging this idea among liberals that the system cannot be questioned, and that "winning" means nobody gets to disagree with you is vital to making those necessary changes as well, and sitting quietly isn't going to do that.