HandsHurtLoL

joined 2 years ago
[–] HandsHurtLoL@kbin.social 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Personally, I'm against the kind of hunkered down tribalism of the 2-party system. It is challenging and difficult to campaign as a politician who wants to show that you will be responsive to the plethora of various needs and experience that our country expresses when you have to distill down to party purity in order to clench nomination.

But we are in a place where one of those two parties is not running in favor of democracy. It's running in favor of fascism. Until that party has either lost relevancy in American politics to the point it is a neutralized threat or until leadership changes significantly to more democracy minded people, this is a Fascism v Everyone Else election, and as a member of the Everyone Else party, we have to organize and throw everything we've got against fascism. These 3rd party ventures (including Cornell West in the Green Party) need to step down and take several seats. Take what your skill set is and use it to either throw it in the lot to defeat fascism, or shoot, use it to vet real leadership in the GOP if you want to be so bipartisan.

[–] HandsHurtLoL@kbin.social 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Yes, there is middle ground for these policies, but it wasn't acceptable to people on the right. Safe, regulated abortion on demand for any reason at any point prior to labor is the farthest left; no abortion access even in the event of miscarriages, rape, or incest is the furthest right. We had safe, regulated abortions almost on demand until the end of the second trimester. That was the middle ground and conservatives pushed and pushed to either completely remove access through nonessential bureaucratic hurdles such as how Texas passed a law in 2013 that all abortion clinics have admitting privileges at local hospitals and all hallways and doors in the center had to be wide enough to wheel gurneys through in the event of an emergency - ostensibly solutions in search of a problem, just to shut down the large majority of abortion providers - or have engaged in a decades long push to manipulate the right type of Manchurian president into attacking the Supreme Court into overturning Roe v Wade.

In the years following that 2013 law, Texas dropped from 41 abortion centers to 10. The law was overturned in 2016, but the damage had been done. Leases for centers had changed terms, funding streams dried up, staff had scattered to the winds... If what we already had in place wasn't an acceptable middle ground, then we as a country would have been able to codify Roe v Wade.

To put it a different way: I'm not saying there is no middle ground. They have said there is no middle ground. To use your own words, it's disingenuous to act as though both sides are being intractable in the policymaking process.

[–] HandsHurtLoL@kbin.social 4 points 2 years ago

If his largest donors have already maxed contributions, then this fundraising model is not sustainable for the transition from primary to general campaigning. Without people on his team who can stretch a dollar (spent $8M in six weeks?!) then he's going to flame out early each quarter.

[–] HandsHurtLoL@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

That is the lowest I've ever seen a margin of error. During general election voter polling, the average is 3-6%, which is why I found the 5% lead Biden has on DeSantis so surprising.

[–] HandsHurtLoL@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

Phenomenal and essential question to ask.

[–] HandsHurtLoL@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

The GOP field looking like an asymptotic graph.

[–] HandsHurtLoL@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

If I'm not mistaken, DeSantis is out at Florida no matter what because of term limits for the governor. So I am not surprised to see slipping poll numbers for favorability. I am shocked to see him diving below the margin for error beneath a democrat in a presidential toss up poll though!!

[–] HandsHurtLoL@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

What do these states think they have to gain with this? I know they're coming at it from a "think of the children" point of view, and are fully willing to ignore the criticisms that a potential child shouldn't have more rights than a realized adult.

But why do these people think this is an issue for the State? I'm thinking here about when this eventually goes to SCOTUS... What is the State's vested interest in denying health care to people who can conceive fetuses?

[–] HandsHurtLoL@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

I think a Trump 3rd party run is the only surefire Democratic victory. I believe that a Trump GOP run will mirror 2016 in which the popular vote is a razor thin (yes, I'm calling a 3-4 Million lead razor thin) victory overshadowed by the electoral college.

I seriously worry about the Cornell West Green Party campaign splitting the Democratic vote for Biden. Biden isn't my first pick, but I would have preferred to see West try to primary Biden and then once West gets any traction, platform planks can be transplanted into the Dem platform. That is not even a possibility for this 3rd party approach.

Also, Jill Stein was a Russian shill to disrupt Sec. Clinton so I can't believe Cornell West has thrown his lot in with the Green Party.

[–] HandsHurtLoL@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

I agree that we need something to stop the hate machine, but it occurs to me that there are still people who carry water for him that in the event of his sudden absence and power vacuum, another toady political figure is going to immediately take up the reins. I wonder how many decades it will take for the reverberations of Trumpism to fade. The Whigs existed in America well until the Civil War... and has even been revived in the last 10 years.

[–] HandsHurtLoL@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

As someone 10 years older than you, let me tell you: the Bill Clinton campaign was amazing. Like, completely forget whatever you think you know about him being a womanizer for a moment...

Clinton went onto a late night talk show geared to black audiences (The Arsenio Hall Show) and played jazz saxophone live like Duke Silver. Clinton, in the typical politician suit, would get on stage and rip a blue streak of reedy sex in front of the house band. In the '90s, everyone jokingly called him the first black president.

At a town hall against George Bush Sr., a black woman asked a question how national debt impacted each of them individually. GB fumbled in his response, but Clinton deftly jumped into show he wasn't out of touch. Collective memory repaints this moment as Clinton with his steely blue eyes stepping forward and saying, "I feel your pain," in a lilting cadence and bit his lip empathizingly. It was noteworthy that a politician was saying "I see you, I hear you" at this kind of event.

And myself being a child in the '90s, Clinton talked to young people about the role they play in democracy and the future of America in a way that had me believing that I could vote for him at the age of 10. Every other politician up to then had talked about children like they weren't in the same room watching the same news as their parents. After becoming president, Clinton went onto Nickelodeon and did a town hall with preteens and teens about smoking that walked that line between getting lectured at and being invested in. It was hosted by a Nickelodeon journalist named Linda Ellerbee who had a show that presented the news to kids for 25 years. Clinton's directed messaging to children probably came from his own experience of having met JFK when he was in his teens as part of a leadership program he was selected for. Shaking JFK's hand and getting to talk with him has been described as the moment young William Jefferson Clinton knew he would one day run for president.

I'm sad we haven't had a politician like this in a terribly long time. I will say though that from a couple of videos I've seen, Obama has been great with children and Biden really talks to kids in ways that show that they will one day be adults. I've never seen them just use kids as political props in a kiss the baby and smile for the photo, then hand over the kid back to the parent like the kid is plutonium.

I will add here that when I first wrote this up and then went to go find source links, it stood out to me how much of my memories were inaccurate compared to the videos I found. I am going to chalk part of this up to the Mandela Effect, but also part of it to remembering the impact these moments had on me and the way these moments were played up in the immediate retelling in conversations at the dining table and from the media (such as SNL who parodied Clinton for well over 10 years). It's weird to think that my memories are wrong, but I think it speaks more to the legendary status of Clinton before his scandals broke out and he was impeached.

[–] HandsHurtLoL@kbin.social 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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