Joe Biden Love Thread

[rubber soul]

Originally Posted by jwb

I wonder if it would work to threaten Manchin etc with primaries or even 3rd party runs if they don't fall in line like Big3 was saying. Like you could even just pick one bill that's a deal breaker and be like vote for this or we're going to help get you out.

Yeah you would be helping a republican win those seats if you followed through on the threat though tbh I'm honestly not sure to what extent that would weaken the Democrats when these people already vote like Republicans. But i don't follow them close enough to say. They might serve some function. The only time i ever hear their names is when they are standing in the Democrats way.

My guess is probably not. For one thing, I don't think Manchin responds very much to intimidation tactics. Two, I don't think he fears being primaried (and indeed he could very well lose: Bernie Sanders carried the state in the 2016 primaries).

Anyway, I don't think the Dems have enough guts to even suggest primaring Manchin. They're terrified of a Republican congress (which they're probably going to get in the House at least, anyway).

[The Batlord]

Just tell him they're gonna look into his daughter's bogus degree he bought her.

[jwb]

Originally Posted by rubber soul

My guess is probably not. For one thing, I don't think Manchin responds very much to intimidation tactics. Two, I don't think he fears being primaried (and indeed he could very well lose: Bernie Sanders carried the state in the 2016 primaries).

Anyway, I don't think the Dems have enough guts to even suggest primaring Manchin. They're terrified of a Republican congress (which they're probably going to get in the House at least, anyway).

I get it i guess my question is what is the difference...i think i heard someone say Biden relies on Manchin for judicial nominees or whatever...

[jwb]

Better how though?

[Trollheart]

I think that's why we're comparatively so lucky. Irish politics is ****, but there's no huge ideological chasm between the parties. They all stand, more or less, for the same thing, they just have slightly different ways of achieving those aims. It's rightly said of the four main Irish parties that they're all the same: they really are somewhat interchangeable, and none of them has ever enacted a particularly large or important piece of legislation that the others wouldn't also have done had they been in power. All parties, for instance, would have supported the right to gay marriage, all parties would have supported divorce and so on. No Irish party would have supported the Iraq invasion, or not spoken out against Trump (inasmuch as it was expedient to do so while he was in power). All want to help the homeless, fix the health system, provide jobs - though they'll all, to a man and woman, line their own pockets first.

In other words, they're ****headed bastards, but they're ALL ****headed bastards, so apart from voting along historical family lines, there's no party anyone wouldn't be prepared to vote for in the way that those in America vote for red or blue and they would never dream of changing that. Essentially, Irish politics is ineffective no matter who is at the helm, so it kind of doesn't matter.

[TheBig3]

Originally Posted by jwb

Better how though?

If Manchin remains a Democrat, he adds a number to the majority, and therefore the Democrats get to control committees.

Originally Posted by The Batlord

You know you started this whole series of rants attacking Biden and the Democratic Party but then immediately pivoted to screeds against the voters. If the voters have been made apathetic and nihilistic about the idea that the government, that exists now purely to facilitate capitalism, will ever do anything to help them then perhaps that's not the fault of the voters, slack-jawed though they may be. Perhaps it's the fault of the institution you claim is "vs." them and has worked long and hard to make sure they are apathetic and nihilistic and have no hope.

The Institution has won, and you can't fight back at them with the atrophied methods of civic engagement they've left you with. That would be like using the cap gun your parents gave you for Christmas to rob them at gunpoint.

Yeah, NAFTA caused people to not trust vaccines.

I know asking you people to explain yourselves is a useless endeavor but if you don't mind explaining "secret fascist" or whatever you're calling me, it would help.

The comfort the Liberal Democracy provides gives way to Fascism. Because most basic needs are taken care of, and the tribalism needs to go somewhere. If Europe isn't going to let us World War our way out of this, the general "I don't read books" crowd is going to think we need a civil war because:

• Transwomen are playing sports
• Fauci is trying to microchip us
• The Deep State stopped JFK Jr. from come back from the dead
• 5G
• Trump telling Candice Owens people going to the hospital aren't vaccinated

If I'm wrong about comfort leading to what we have here, I'm willing to listen. But I need to know how a bunch of people in the Rust Belt choose the party of Corporate Tax Breaks over...I don't know, any other candidate.

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by TheBig3

IYeah, NAFTA caused people to not trust vaccines.

I'm not sure where you got that, I mean in looking back at historical instances of pandemics people tend to be pretty irresponsible and have little patience for being told to do things. In this instance there's right wing conspiracy theories about masks and vaccines but historically speaking people are being as dumb as they tend to be.

I know asking you people to explain yourselves is a useless endeavor but if you don't mind explaining "secret fascist" or whatever you're calling me, it would help.

If you're just using this post to respond to all of the posts criticizing you then that's kind of schizophrenic cause I never called you cryptofascist. I just said your phrasing of new generations being weak cause they're comfortable while older generations being strong cause they had hardship was a simplistic right wing idea.

I then explained that it was the WW2 generation who gave up their union militancy for a welfare state (private and public) that gave them pensions, minimum wage, legally recognized unions, social security, etc. Meaning that it wasn't the weakness of later generations of workers that gave into comfort but an original sin of a militant working class who capitulated to the false promises of capitalism.

The comfort the Liberal Democracy provides gives way to Fascism. Because most basic needs are taken care of, and the tribalism needs to go somewhere. If Europe isn't going to let us World War our way out of this, the general "I don't read books" crowd is going to think we need a civil war because:

• Transwomen are playing sports
• Fauci is trying to microchip us
• The Deep State stopped JFK Jr. from come back from the dead
• 5G
• Trump telling Candice Owens people going to the hospital aren't vaccinated

This is wrongheaded because the comfort given by liberal democracy was given when WW2 gave America half of the world's wealth and once Europe had been rebuilt after the Marshall Plan and China and Japan became industrial power houses that all undercut America's hegemony and neoliberalism and a falling rate of profit in the 70s brought the agreement between a weakened US labor movement into conflict with the profits of American capital the comforts of liberal capitalist democracy became unsustainable and so the financialization of the 80s and onward tightened the belts of the working class more and more and more as decades went on, stagnation of wages and such, so that basic needs were met ever less and less.

That is what leads to fascism. The upper classes consolidate more and more and the middle class becomes ever more economically tenuous.

If I'm wrong about comfort leading to what we have here, I'm willing to listen. But I need to know how a bunch of people in the Rust Belt choose the party of Corporate Tax Breaks over...I don't know, any other candidate.

Do you think that the rust belt has the same level of comfort as the 50s? There's a reason they call it the rust belt.

[jwb]

Originally Posted by elphenor

didnt you just get abortion rights

I'd be wary of Irish conservatives

I still don't have abortion rights. **** America

[Trollheart]

Originally Posted by elphenor

didnt you just get abortion rights

I'd be wary of Irish conservatives

Yeah the point about that is it was, as most big decisions here are, done by referendum. The government - whoever is in power - have to abide by that. Any of the four parties (three really, see last election when Sinn Fein won but nobody would form a govt with them so we are where we are) would have put that referendum forward based on public opinion and clamour and debate; none of them could refute the results. Not like there where they make a law and that's it. I mean, have you even ever HAD a referendum? Does American politics recognise the term?

This country is completely conservative, with a small c - comes from being so dominated by the Catholic Church for centuries. But we're nowhere near a right-wing event. We just don't give a ****, or those who do are too much in the minority to ever make a political difference. If need be, I could see all Irish parties (even Sinn Fein, the "Republican Party" - that means a different thing here than it does there) coming together in solidarity against fascism.

[The Batlord]

Of course we have referendums. You have to have someone to tell if the ball is out of bounds or not.