You’re right, I forgot that Bloomberg was still in and running a campaign entirely designed to block Bernie. Nothing says, “Democracy,” like an oligarch entering an election and using his personal wealth to undermine another candidate, right?

Except it wasn’t just him and Bernie. It was also Warren, so the progressive vote was spit, while the centrist vote was coordinated around Biden. Nice try though!

I think you’re forgetting the part where Clinton paid off the DNC’s debts and became it’s only financial lifeline, for which DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz abdicated control of party to Clinton’s team long before she secured the nomination.. Or that the AP controversially called the primary for Hillary just before California voted, giving voters the impression the primary was over before voting finished. Or that the DNC argued in court that they had no obligation give Bernie a fair, democratic primary. Or that Representatives Ford and Smith admitted the party did coalesce around Biden in 2020 to block Bernie. Or that polls had Bernie beating Trump by a wider margin than Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020.

So this aged great, huh?

I’ll also add that you need to primary basically anyone that has been in politics for more than 15 years. There is just too much, “common sense,” in this party that is just wrong. In 2016, it was smart to run a centrist campaign that tried to move moderates away from Trump, and it failed. In 2024, they ran the same fucking campaign, and it failed.

There are well intentioned people that somehow still think that the 1992, third-way strategy will deliver gains through incrementalism, and it’s just not going to happen. Primary them, so that they at least have to contend with the new political realities. Trump picked up working class voters across across all demographics, not just the white working class. Everyone wants change; offer real change.

I doubt that, but it would be nice if you’re right.

Yeah, a Trump victory scares me, but what scares me more is the more competent fascist that comes next. The Democrats can’t keep waiting for the Republicans to, “come to their senses.” The material conditions of the working class need to improve, or fascist populism will take in the absence of economic populism.

The Dark Knight trilogy really wanted to be a realistic, grounded take on the Batman mythos, so they dropped the more fantastical elements of some characters’ backstories. Ra’s Al Ghul was no longer immortal, Bane didn’t have super steroids, the Joker wasn’t permanently bleached by chemicals…then there’s Two-Face.

I guess they thought acid burns were too unrealistic, so they gave him regular burns…apparently without knowing that burns that severe would be so painful that he wouldn’t even be able to remain conscious, much less run around the city on a killing spree. I mean, you can see exposed muscle in some places. There’s a line where Gordon says he’s rejecting skin grafts, and I remember thinking, “WTF are you talking about? He should be in a medically induced coma, not making healthcare decisions.” Half of his body was an open wound; I’m amazed he didn’t die of infection 15 minutes after he left the hospital.

Do they think your odds get better if you’re get thrown down a metal tube on impact?

Sooner or later, you will get trapped somewhere forever. Over the course of an infinite lifespan, the odds that a building collapses on you or a tunnel caves in on you basically become 100%. Someday, you will fall into the hole that you will stay in until the sun explodes, and then you will drift in the void until the heat death of the universe.

Who is this for? They’re acting like getting endorsements from the families of Bush and Cheney is like getting an endorsement from Ronald Regan, but Bush and Cheney were not popular at the end of their administration; they started two interminable wars and ended with the largest recession in recent history. Trump cut his teeth in 2016 by trashing George Bush and curb-stomping his brother in the primary. Conservatives who are still open to Trump probably aren’t huge fans of the Bush family! All this is doing is demoralizing the progressive base and showing conservatives that the kind of Republicans they rejected in 2016 support Harris.

The original commenter did give an example. They referenced the DNC not allowing a Palestinian to speak (which, again, is cited the article that we all presumably read before we started commenting). That example was met with, “citation needed.”

Anyway, I’m not familiar with the quote you gave, I feel no obligation to look it up, but I do feel entitled to your time and energy. Provide me with a hyperlink proving it’s real or it never happened.

Yup. We gotta vote for them this election, but replace them in the next. Otherwise, we’re just hitting snooze on fascism for another 4 years.

What about my original comment led you to believe I thought they were equivalent? As I said, Republicans are vile, hateful, and exploiting our political divisions for power. But the Democrats are just as responsible for the material conditions that have allowed facism to flourish, and demanding accountability and change for that isn’t nitpicking. If the Democrats don’t stop being corporate stooges, this doesn’t end if Trump is defeated; it ends when another fascist finally wins.

Where’s that quote from? Citation needed.

History didn’t start in 2016. The Democrats were happy to cozy up to the Silicone Valley tech giants, even as they developed into monopolies whose products gave users the very brain-poisoning that delivered Trump. They were happy to prioritize Wall Street bailouts over homeowners’ bailouts after the subprime mortgage crises, even if meant their constituents lost their homes. They’ve been happy to sideline or undermine anyone who dares run to their left, from Bernie Sanders to Rashida Tlaib.

The Democrats are not well-meaning, helpless progressives that just can’t get anything done because of America’s byzantine political structure. They have actively stopped any significant changes to the status quo in order to keep their donors happy. They’ve spent decades deluding themselves into thinking they could somehow improve conditions for the working class without demanding concessions from the billionaire class, even as the largest wealth transfer in history, from the lowest income Americans to the highest income Americans, was taking place. They may not be as vile or hateful as the Republicans, but they are just as responsible for America’s decay.

Oh, that’s easy; we don’t! Every four years, the fabric of our society frays and tears a little more, while our politicians either exploit our divisions or attempt to repair them without making any changes to the material conditions or systemic problems that create these fractures, because fixing these underlying issues would upset the handful of billionaires that actually control our government! But there’s a new Fast & Furious movie every two or three years, so it balances out.

And I think there’s a difference between asking people to back up a fact or statistic and asking people to read the news for you. If someone is going to do the latter, then they should at least start with a polite (or at least neutral) inquiry before jumping to skeptical demands for sources.

Yeah, once again, that wasn’t me. If you looked at the profile name, or read my first comment more carefully, you’d know that was a different commenter. I just get annoyed when people demand sources when they clearly haven’t even read the article their commenting on.

I get what you’re saying, but that’s just an assumption. You’re assuming that they’ll show up for Harris, just like Hillary assumed she didn’t need to campaign in the Rust Belt. You may be right, but I wouldn’t gamble the Presidency on it again.