- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
- cross-posted to:
- nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
Personality certainly matters. But it might be more useful, in terms of the actual stakes of a contest, to think about the presidential election as a race between competing coalitions of Americans. Different groups, and different communities, who want very different — sometimes mutually incompatible — things for the country.
The coalition behind Joe Biden wants what Democratic coalitions have wanted since at least the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt: government assistance for working people, federal support for the inclusion of more marginal Americans.
As for the coalition behind Trump? Beyond the insatiable desire for lower taxes on the nation’s monied interests, there appears to be an even deeper desire for a politics of domination. Trump speaks less about policy, in any sense, than he does about getting revenge on his critics. He’s only concerned with the mechanisms of government to the extent that they are tools for punishing his enemies.
If you’re an American, and you like what the Democratic coalition is after, then get involved, help with money if you can, and pay attention to downballot races too, not just the top.
There are very real differences between the parties, on a pretty wide variety of issues. Who is elected has consequences in terms of policy that we have to live with.
That’s a very big deal.
Of course - the good cop bad cop routine doesn’t work if there is no difference between them.
Let’s see about that, shall we?
Both are pathologically dedicated to capitalism.
Both are pathologically dedicated to imperialism.
In everything that matters (ie, are not contrived “hot button” issues) the reps and the dems march in perfect lockstep with each other.
You were saying?
The Democrats don’t work in perfect lockstep; they’re a coalition, and as such, you often see pieces of the coalition who disagree with each other.
The Republican party tends to operate as a patronage machine, where they all go along with what the patrons dictate.
Then show me the aspects of the Dems that are anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist. Shouldn’t be too difficult if you are correct, right?
Examples include Sen. Sanders. It’s not hard.
Sanders isn’t a Democrat, he’s independent.
He was. He changed registration to run for President a few years back, and caucuses with the Democrats.
Ah.
Well, I guess explains why he’s been pretty much useless since then.
His power has been limited because people who fully share his views are a minority of the Senate and of the Democratic Party primary voters. You want something like what he wants? Then you need to organize to elect people who are willing to do it.
Examples include the guy that democrats fought hard to make sure he wouldn’t win the primaries, twice. Note that he polled better against trump than clinton did, so we could’ve avoided all this trump trash from the beginning, but the democrats didn’t actually care about that, they just wanted to keep their status quo power structure going.
As Democrats are so happy to point out whenever anyone says the party screwed him over in the primaries, Sanders is not a Democrat.
If it’s not hard, why have you failed?
Sanders is not an anti-capitalist nor an anti-imperialist. He’s just an old-style “New Deal” liberal who believes that capitalism needs to be “nicer” to the people it crushes underfoot in order to be maintained.
Do you have anything else, perhaps?