That's kind of a weird question. Russia isn't communist and arguably never got further than state capitalism under the Soviet Union. Russia is certainly a dictatorship/oligarchy now, but so is the US (with extra steps that are currently being dismantled anyways).
Tinidril
joined 2 years ago
Making a phone call or two is not the same thing as dictating how millions of people vote.
Yeah, talking to you is useless. I never said he did that. I explained exactly what I was talking about, and Obama directly influencing individual voters was not part of it. We're done.
I don't contest that Trump is an oligarch. Whether he is part of the establishment is (or rather was) a matter of definition. If, by establishment, we mean the specific cliques that run the two party system, then he was an outsider. He had the cash to run in their circles, but they despised him. Thus came Hillary's "pied Piper" strategy to encourage the media to pay attention to Trump in the Republican primary. She never even dreamed he could beat her in the general.
If we are being more general and referring to both the moneyed and political establishment then, yeah, he has always been establishment. He might not have been allowed to sit at the establishment cool-kids table, but he was one of them.
Still, none of that is relevant to his brand. He successfully positioned himself as an outsider breaking through the walls of power. That's what has made him so politically invulnerable. The more the political establishment and their talking heads talk about how bad Trump is, the more voters liked him. The list of things that Trump did or said that would have destroyed an establishment politician is a mile long but, in every case, it helped him.
You havn't given any proof that Obama has magical powers to chose nominees.
When did I assert that? Note that I've given you links for several points so far and you just ignore that you were wrong and pick at the rest. It's like creationists where every newly found "missing link" just creates two more missing links before and after. However, in full knowledge that this is a waste of time, here are some links.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/obama-warns-2020-democrats-warren-sanders
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/09/barack-obama-joe-biden-2020-campaign-178115
And a quote from that last link:
But some of his aides now concede that behind the scenes Obama played a role in nudging things in Biden’s direction at the crucial moment when the Biden team was organizing former candidates to coalesce around Biden.
That's about as close as your going to get when it comes to back room deals. There were also a number of people from inside the campaigns and Obama's team that spoke to Obama's involvement, but those are harder to find and I doubt you would care anyways.
I am fucking sick of ALL identity politics. It is the main reason why Dems are losers.
It's certainly a factor. However, it's the way the Democrats use identity politics to avoid real issues. Biden in particular blatantly uses these issues as a shield.
This is citing a case where the outcome was literally already determined. That is hugely different from your assertion,
Not really. It happens in every single contested Democratic primary, and voters rarely have an accurate understanding of where a race stands.
That wasn’t a “deal”. That was Pete Buttigieg taking unilateral action, then many of the others...
Believe what you want, but it wasn't just "many others". It was every establishment friendly candidate, and several of them were well ahead of Biden at that point in the race. Absent any specifics whatsoever, the "Occam's razor" explanation was coordination by party leadership. However, there were multiple reports from inside each campaign but Warren's of Obama's involvement.
It was ridiculous that anybody even mentioned this piece of ancient history. EVERYBODY was against school integration
Not EVERYBODY. For instance, not Sanders. Anyways, I made no judgement over the question of Biden and racism. It was Kamala, and it's notable that it was the only time she briefly moved up to be remotely relevant in the 2020 primary. If we are going to consider Biden's willingness to project racism (I won't dare to guess his real views) then this clip should at least get some consideration.
Would you stop insulting millions of voters?
LOL, um, are you aware of who is currently sitting in the oval office?
Who the fuck would be stupid enough to change your vote just because somebody on TV wanted you to. ESPECIALLY if you are voting Bernie Sanders.
Sanders had more committed voters than anyone, but not everyone who might have voted for Sanders was that committed. I'm not spinning theories here. This is a pretty well understood aspect of how narratives work in politics.
But probably nothing that doesn’t insult the intelligence of voters in general
Have you ever seen any "man on the street" interviews with the voting public? Not every voter is an ignorant fool, but a whole lot of them definitely are. The reasons many people give for their votes, even when it's for someone I like, are absolutely insane. Again, I reference the current president.
Since the whole deal is about loyalty checks, this response would unfortunately give them exactly the truth they want to know.
Better to make shit up and end every sentence with "to the glory and vision of Donald J Trump and his witness Elon Musk."
What is happening is different and what is being reported is different.
That's just the thing. It's different for you.
I want to go back to having political discussions where I may vehemently disagree with someone else but where the stakes weren’t literally life and death
The stakes are always literally life and death. You'll be hard pressed to come up with any kind of important legislation that ultimately doesn't save or kill people. Gay marriage is a life or death issue. Vehicle efficiency is a life of death issue. The environment is definitely a life or death issue.
I fucking can’t stand how divided we’ve gotten
The divides have always been there. Some people just weren't being heard. The problem isn't that we are divided, the problem is that it's no longer below the surface. It's not just the fascists and other Republicans (if there any other Republicans anymore), it's the comfortable suburbs that were satisfied to ignore rural and urban issues and act like we had all the time in the world to solve them.
All I want to do is to sink into the same oblivious disengagement that got us here.
No sympathy.
The commonality is extolling faith as a virtue. That is the violence that is being done to society that is nearly universal to all religious people. If society encouraged people to believe in things only to the same extent that they have evidence for them, this would be a very different world.
The ones that will remember are the ones being purged.
We had that chance. We picked Biden instead. Now it's "find out" time.
They are only expensive up front. When you account for maintenance and the difference between the cost of gas and the cost of electricity, a lot of electrics come out well ahead within several years of purchase. That's also not counting the societal costs in health issues, premature death, and the geopolitical turmoil caused by dependance on oil.
Not that electrics are a panacea for the societal costs of automobiles. Micro particles from tire wear is still a big issue, and rare earth minerals have geopolitical consequences of their own. But, on balance, electrics are cheaper for individuals and for society.