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

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When it gets to the point where you need to dismiss AOC and the Squad as Wall Street shills then it's Game Over.

Might as well load up the truck with the rifles and ammunition and canned food and go off the grid somewhere nobody can find you.

The reason would be to vote against Trump and his allies. As @The_Walrus sort of explained, a vote for the Greens etc. is a one-half vote in favor of Trump. But if you don't see Trump and his posse as a threat then clearly we have a fundamental disagreement.

Oh, they're most certainly a threat, the problem is that the Democrats are also a threat and if Democrats want allies to face the Trumpist threat they need to actually deliver returns for those allies instead of just hoping Trump is a severe enough boogieman to make leftists ignore their principles and vote for them.

The US doesn't have a left wing party and neither right wing party is entitled to leftist votes without earning them. It won't the the fault of leftists that the Democratic party was too weak to defend American democracy from fascism, it'll be the fault of the people who kept the party so out of touch the whole time.

I'm just stating a fact. They will not stand up to power.

The Democrats are mostly centre-left with a significant far-left faction. They align with centre-left parties around the world. You could make the case that Joe Manchin is centre-right. If you're in West Virginia then you should probably vote for him anyway because the alternative is worse and no socialist is going to be elected there for decades to come.

The Democrats have bent over backwards to accommodate the views of people like you and it nearly cost them the 2020 election. The fact that you're still unhappy and still calling the most left-wing government in American history "centre right" suggests that nothing is ever going to be good enough for you, and there's absolutely no reason they should ever try to accommodate you again. It works both ways.

The far-left can choose: they can vote for sensible centre-left politicians who will move America towards their utopia, or they can throw a hissy fit and make it easier for the far-right to win. There are other options, of course - voting third party, trying to hijack the Democratic Party the way the far-right have hijacked the Republican Party - but ultimately the choice is between centre-left and the right. Not the centre-right, in most of America that's been completely hollowed out.

If you don't live in a closely contested district or state, then of course voting Green to signify that you would be willing to vote for a far-left candidate is a fairly low-risk strategy (although it isn't entirely risk-free: you could be written off as impossible to reach, or the Democrats could move even further left and lose more votes). But in a swing state or a swing district, yeah, it's pretty irresponsible. The Democrats do have a responsibility not to alienate you, but in 2020 and as President, Biden has gone out of his way to appeal to you and you're still calling him centre-right. Yeah, the problem there isn't with the Democrats.

The Democrats are not center-left at all, both parties continue to shift to the right, with the Republicans being off the spectrum batshit crazy right.

Biden has basically voted Republican his whole career.

Supporting neo-liberal parties like the Democrats only leads to neo-liberal priorities being achieved and leftists are cluing into this. The Democratic Party may have chosen to make itself irrelevant but that seems like an opportunity for the left to actually have a party of their own after the Dems crash and burn without leftist support.

Your grasp of US politics is amazing. I can't imagine having one-tenth the level of knowledge of UK politics OTOH the only thing I've ever really wanted to know is how I could book an appointment with Boris Johnson's hairdresser. I've asked more than once on Reddit and nobody gives me so much as the time of day. Feh!

The power that they have to stand up against is grassroots. Not "corporate".

AOC and the squad are only one percent of Congress. And they are all Freshman, with zero seniority. So thier combined power is even less than that one percent. So even if the squad works in lockstep with each other they only have about one tenth of one percent of the power of Congress. And they have to oppose, or make deals with, the remaining 99.9 percent of the power of congress. Half of Congress is terrified of alienating the forty five percent of the American electorate who still worships Donald Trump. And that half of Congress (the GOP) include Southern fossils like McConnel who DO have lots of seniority, and thus lots of per capita power.

But you expected AOC, on her first day, to just wave a magic wand and make the forty five percent of the American population who voted for Trump to just vanish into thin air (along with the GOP half of Congress who they elected), and then for her to sprinkle pixie dust that will magically turn the remaining half of Congress (the Dems) into zombies to do her bidding.

Sorry but your expectations were not realistic. The fault was not hers for disappointing you.

And its not up to us to "force Biden to be more progressive". Its up to YOU to go out into Trump country and talk to the grassroots, and to persuade Trump supporters that your scapegoat for their problems (your scapegoat being this "oligarchy" you talk about) is a better scapegoat than Trump's scapegoats (foreign countries, foreign immigrants to our country, and minorities).

Also Biden IS being more progressive than anyone expected. He pulled us out of Afganistan practically overnight, and his BBB Bill is rather far reaching a program.

^AOC and the Squad campaigned on using their leverage to push progressive issues, but they have backed down twice this year on doing just that. They didn't step up during #forcethevote in January, and they were nowhere to be seen during the MFA rallies a few months ago. They are f*****g worthless!

You're living in a dream world where the Dems are concerned. Being an apologist for these as*holes will get us nowhere.

Biden is progress? Seriously? You have to be taking the piss, right?

Basically, what I'm hearing is a lot of words that in the end come down to "vote blue no matter who", which is a sure recipe for disappointment.

Also, VM is completely correct about Bernie and the Squad being controlled opposition at best, they won't even take a symbolic stand when it actually matters, and I say that as someone who used to like Bernie and even threw a primary vote his way.

The last point is very easy to prove false - Biden is a lifelong Democrat.

On gun control, the Federal Assault Weapons ban is the most ambitious piece of gun control legislation in history, and is one reason why Biden received an "F" grade from the NRA.

On labour, Biden received an 85% approval rating from AFL-CIO - this compares to a 14% score for Mitch McConnell or 16% for Chuck Grassley. The only Republican who had a better score than Biden in 2009 was Arlen Specter, who crossed the floor a year later. Second was Susan Collins with a score of 47%.

On social security, Biden received a 96% lifetime score from the Alliance for Retired Americans. In 2008, no sitting Republican senator had a lifetime score of above 53% (Olympia Snowe from Maine).

On foreign policy, Biden opposed the Gulf War (now generally considered amongst the least controversial military actions in US history) as well as declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Finally, on social issues, in 2007 Biden received a score of 0% from the Family Research Council. Most Republicans received a score of 85%+. The lowest scores by Republicans were a three-way tie between Snowe, Specter and Collins on 27%; only one other Republican had a score below 50%, and that was John McCain who missed votes to campaign for the Presidency.

Right, now we've put that one to bed, the earlier points: Democrats are centre-right, and both parties are shifting to the right. The second of those is plainly untrue. If both parties are shifting to the right, why is American politics becoming so much more left-wing? Where did the Affordable Care Act spring up from? Why are gay marriage and stem cells no longer hot button issues? Why is Congress passing a $1trn infrastructure bill? While there's no doubt the Republicans have moved a long way to the right, the Democrats have also moved to the left: https://columbialawreview.org/content/a ... -hardball/

And as for the Democrats being centre-right - bluntly, that's just plain nonsense. The Democrats are a social democratic party, which around the world (except in communist countries) is considered a centre-left ideology. Additionally, the terms "right" and "left" are not objective measures. There is no world in which the centre of American politics is consistently to the left of both political parties, because they would simply shift to the left in order to win more voters.

^I've already debunked all that thoroughly in another thread awhile back. It gets tiresome to attempt to educate you on matters you know little about.

This is somewhat ironic, and I have to say I am impressed to learn that he had such great foresight.

This is what I mean. It's my opinion that America's participation in the Gulf War was the catalyst for every major conflict in which the US became embroiled over the subsequent 30 years. Consider that Osama bin Laden formed al-Qaeda in response to the Saudi royal family allowing the US to use Saudi Arabia as a staging ground for the invasion, because to him this activity desecrated Arabia which bin Laden believed to be sacred and worthy of protection from the unclean feet of infidels. This of course led to 9/11, which in turn led to the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq. I guess you could argue that the invasion of Iraq in particular somehow contributed to the Arab Spring although I won't try describe a mechanism. The Arab Spring led to US involvement in Libya as well as Syria and some other predominately Muslim parts of the world where the average American didn't even know the US had troops unless some lost their lives there and it was reported to the press.

So yeah props to him!

Let's not forget Biden voted in favor of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Biden had Presidential aspirations back then and probably assumed that a vote against would cost him politically. Beyond that I have no idea what reasoning might have led him to cast that vote. Fact is, he was and is capable of acting cynically, so what? What US politician with any serious potential for being elected President never acts cynically? DeSantis? O'Rourke?