Bernie Bros are as much a threat to US democracy as...

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Biden, like Obama, the Clinton's, and the Bush's, has been an ardent supporter of the MIC. It's as simple as that. These are not good people.

The more I think about it, the more I believe Chris Hedges is correct: There is no electoral solution to our problems. It's going to require a massive resistance by the people.

Let's not make this personal - it's against the rules, unbecoming on the individual making the personal attack, and not a discussion in which you would come out ahead.

Saying that you would prove someone wrong but you can't be bothered is frankly rather a giveaway that you can't actually do it. I dismantled all of your claims, providing evidence to support my counter-claims, exposing them as the falsehoods that they are. I've presented the facts, and they remain the facts until someone actually shows that they aren't - merely claiming to have debunked them does not make it so. I doubt many people are convinced by your claims that I "know little about" these things - I demonstrably know quite a lot about them.

I have two issues with this post (which I have snipped for length). The first is factual, the second is moral.

Factually, it's incorrect to say that Al-Qaeda was formed in response to the Gulf War. Al-Qaeda was formed in 1988, three years before the Gulf War. Bin Laden offered to defend Saudi Arabia from Saddam using Al-Qaeda, but the Saudis chose to go with the coalition. This angered him, but by that stage he was already running a jihadist terrorist organisation. Bin Laden's stated motivations for 9/11 were widespread, ranging from American support for Israel and homosexuality to various conflicts (most of which did not involve the US at all!) - I think 9/11 probably happens regardless of the Gulf War, and certainly Al-Qaeda would still exist.

Morally, I think it's just pretty... I mean, reprehensible is a strong word, but perhaps blasé? Defending Kuwait was the right thing to do. Frankly we should do more of that sort of thing. Saddam had invaded Kuwait. His soldiers were executing Kuwaiti civilians without trial. They were massing by the border with Saudi Arabia, who Saddam had deep resentment towards for not writing off the debts in ran up in the Iran-Iraq War. We shouldn't stand by and allow imperialist dictators with a history of attempted genocide and use of weapons of mass destruction against civilians to expand their empires. Intervening was the right thing to do, just as in Bosnia and Kosovo.

If "Bernie Bros" are a threat to US democracy, then Saddam was a much bigger threat to Kuwait. Standing up to that sort of evil is necessary.

It's misleading to say Biden "voted in favour of the 2003 invasion of Iraq". The Senate never voted on the 2003 invasion of Iraq. They passed this joint resolution of Congress: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoriza ... on_of_2002

As early as March 2003 - the first two weeks of the war - Biden was already criticising the Bush administration for not making full use of the diplomatic sections of that resolution prior to invading. By 2005 he was already saying he shouldn't have trusted Bush so readily. Honestly, given the man's complete naivety about the Taliban, I can completely buy him thinking that Bush wouldn't actually use the authorisation to go to war almost immediately. He's a dovish guy who seems to assume everyone else is too.

I already "bothered " multiple times to debunk your lack of knowledge of the Democratic Party. How many times do I have to bother before you further educate yourself on the topic?

I was four years older than you are now when Bill Clinton took office in 1993. I lived through his administration, I watched as transformed the Dems into a right-wing party. I watched as he gutted welfare, deregulated Wall Street, and passed NAFTA. I watched as Joe Biden wrote the 1994 crime bill that led to the mass incarceration of American citizens, mostly people of color, for minor crimes.

There is nothing liberal or progressive about the Democratic Party. You've yet to prove me wrong.

It's odd, then, that you keep trying to claim I lack knowledge of the Democratic Party.



Workfare is a bad idea. Clinton was forced somewhat by Gingrich presenting him with a series of bills which he vetoed, and the resulting compromise, while bad, was politically very difficult to avoid given the public mood about welfare at the time.

Deregulation of Wall Street is an extremely broad term. Deregulation can be a good or bad thing or essentially inconsequential. For example, Clinton's repeal of sections 20 and 32 of Glass-Steagall, which is one of the iconic pieces of deregulation from his term, probably had very little impact upon the banking industry because the Federal Reserve had already changed their interpretation of these provisions. Even Paul Krugman, a left-wing economist who is a critic of Glass-Steagall repeal, thinks that the effect was minor.

NAFTA was a great thing and again is entirely in keeping with liberal orthodoxy. Historically the right have been the ones opposed to trade liberalisation, although that wasn't the case in the 80s and 90s in the US.

The Crime Bill has had plenty of negative effects. Three-strikes was an awful idea, mandatory drug testing for those on supervised release was a bad idea, truth-in-sentencing was a bad idea. Ending access to higher education was perverse and cruel. Expanding the use of the death penalty was stupid. But there were also a lot of things which could be argued to be positive. The provisions for preventing violence against women, child sex trafficking, and bad behaviour by government agents are surely things you would support. The Federal Assault Weapons ban was poorly implemented, but it's hard to argue it was conservative.

As for the idea there is nothing liberal or progressive about the Democrats, again, that's plainly wrong. Biden's massive economic stimulus ($1.9 trillion), his $1.2trn investment in infrastructure which includes pro-union provisions, rejoining the Paris accords, pausing federal executions, and allowing openly trans people to serve in the military are some of his achievements so far. He's pledged to do more on climate (so far he's been blocked by Congress) and voting rights (ditto).

Now, maybe this isn't left-wing enough for you, and that's your right. But to deny it is left-wing at all is a bit silly.

There's nothing particularly progressive about any of Biden's initiatives. The infrastructure bill comes way short of the 2.6 trillion many experts say is needed to fix our crumbling roads and bridges.

Biden has already backed away from issues upon which he strongly campaigned, like the $15/hour minimum wage, and ending fracking on federal lands. I expect him to be about as bad on the environment as Obama was, who was actually worse than Bush.

Nah, we have two right-wing parties in the U.S. and both continue to shift to the right. There is complete continuity between Pub and Dem administration when it comes to our biggest existential threats. Continuing to vote for candidates from either party is foolish. It will get us nowhere.

That doesn't mean finding the $1.2trn isn't a radical step, or it somehow isn't progressive.


Biden has raised the minimum wage for executive branch contractors to $15 an hour. He attempted to get a federal minimum wage increase through Congress, but it wasn't eligible for the reconciliation process and there weren't the votes to pass it any other way. The American system contains a large number of checks and balances. The President cannot just do whatever they want.

It's worse than that. There's no good reason to distinguish between fracking and conventional drilling, but Biden promised to ban them both on federal lands. Seems like he probably rowed back from this commitment in order to get Manchin's approval for his climate bill... which Manchin promptly didn't give. He's also faced a legal challenge. Still, this is disappointing.

That's a rather outlandish claim. What makes you say that? Obama:

- established the largest marine nature reserve in the world
- quadrupled the size of the largest marine national monument in the world
- invested $90bn in subsidies for green energy
- established tax credits for homeowners who made their homes more energy efficient or bought low-carbon technology like electric cars
- $500m for training people to work in green jobs
- banned plastic microbeads
- agreed a bilateral deal with China for limiting carbon emissions, the first time China had agreed to limit their emissions at all.
- the Omnibus Public Land Management Act provided the biggest expansion of land and water protection in a generation
- the Clean Power Plan was designed to cut emissions in the power sector by 32% on 2005 levels by 2030 (the actual cuts are likely to be much greater because clean energy has developed faster than expected)
- Negotiated the Paris Climate Agreement, the most successful climate agreement in history.

I'm not aware of any achievements by Bush that match those.

You can keep asserting that all you like, it doesn't make it true! Again, there are a lot of issues with that statement, but the main one is the logical one - if both parties are moving to the right, then why is the government steadily moving to the left?

All the stuff you're talking about is rather meaningless in the big picture . Obama presided over a record increase in oil production, heavily promoted fracking, and allowed drilling in the Arctic twice.

Also, he did not stand up for the indigenous people at the DAPL protests who where getting blasted with water cannons in subfreezing temperatures for defending their water supply from contamination.

So no real measures to fight climate change and move us in the direction of renewable energy where achieved during the Obama administration. Him and Biden, and most of our elected officials, take too much money from the fossil fuel industry.

Obama was simply a horrible president, who rolled over for his corporate benefactors at every turn. Democrats are actually more dangerous than Republicans at this point, because they get more bad s**t done because the media gives them cover, and the left just goes to sleep, anyway, and don't pay attention to what goes on in Congress.

I don't know alternate universe you're living in, but the government is most assuredly not shifting to the left. It's contining to serve the business donor class with ever increasing vigor and it will only get worse.