Comments by "Harry Stoddard" (@HarryS77) on "Bernie Lays the SMACKDOWN During DNC Speech" video.
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I think that's pure fantasy. Nomiki's point is well taken. If the establishment wins, why would it make concessions or be "pressured?" And pressured to do what? Some half assed, white moderate, needlessly complex, bureaucratic plan that, like Obamacare, is better but still unsustainable.
If Biden wins in a landslide, he'll claim a mandate and use that as a shield to ignore progressive "pressure." If he only ekes out a win, he'll say the country is fractured, we need unity, and progressive ideas are too radical and divisive. Has no one payed attention to how these people operate?
You can also be sure that Biden will be pressured constantly by myriad special interests, with whom he already shares goals, assumptions, and even personal ties.
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@alexxa5584 I never said anything about pressuring Trump. You can keep banging at that straw man if you want, but it's irrelevant.
I think one sign of how broken people's brains are by Trump is that they can't have any political discussion without doing what you just did, resorting to a shoddy binary logic. If Biden isn't amenable to progressive pressure, that must mean I prefer Trump!
Uh, no. What it means is precisely what I said, that the notion of Biden being moved to the left is unrealistic and fantastical. It doesn't mean Trump is better. It means that the ability to pressure Biden is a misguided reason to support him, one that I think could backfire in a number of ways, perhaps most importantly the fact that that framing reorganizes organic, autonomous, grassroots movements away from direct action and protest and toward the sphere of traditional politics, which is what Biden's good at.
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@reptomicus Here's Gore on Bush's foreign policy.
“President Bush deserves tremendous credit for the way he has led the nation in a highly successful opening counter-attack in the war against terror.”
“Since the State of the Union, there has been much discussion of whether Iraq, Iran and North Korea truly constitute an ‘Axis of Evil.’ As far as I’m concerned, there really is something to be said for occasionally putting diplomacy aside and laying one’s cards on the table. There is value in calling evil by its name. …”
“[T]here are still governments that could bring us great harm. And there is a clear case that one of these governments in particular represents a virulent threat in a class by itself: Iraq. As far as I am concerned, a final reckoning with that government should be on the table. To my way of thinking, the real question is not the principle of the thing, but of making sure that this time we will finish the matter on our terms.”
“In 1991, I crossed party lines and supported the use of force against Saddam Hussein, but he was allowed to survive his defeat as the result of a calculation we all had reason to deeply regret for the ensuing decade. And we still do.”
“The question remains—what next? Is Iran under the hard-liners less of a proliferation threat than Iraq? Or less involved with terrorism? If anything, Iran is at this moment a much more dangerous challenge in each area than Iraq."
In its evil, Iraq belonged in a class by itself, according to Gore. In Cobra II, Michael Gordon (himself an early cheerleader for the war, with Judith Miller), Iraq was actually chosen because it was the weakest and could be made an example of.
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@Doppe1ganger From the standpoint of preserving human life, it isn't. Trump's done enough damage. I know Biden isn't going to be friendly to progressives. I'm fairly certain he won't make real concessions; only superficial ones, maybe, that radical centrists like Alexay can take as "marginal victories" and an excuse to do as little as possible. I understand Biden could have a cooling effect on the left—not some bullshit co-opted "progressives," but a real, pro-worker, anti-capital left. It's also possible that Biden won't matter, that we've already stepped far enough into radical politics that there's no going back and—as plenty of thinkers, from Tocqueville to Bookchin, have described—Biden's attempts to fix Trump's failures may be his biggest weakness as a leader precisely because people realize that his solutions impose arbitrary, inhumane, and irrational privation. It's not about asking Biden for crumbs. It's about trying to take the bakery. I think that's a much more dangerous and dubious proposition under Trump.
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