uran10 said:
"Not me, Us" The Us in that will not move to Biden
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I would say speak for yourself, but you already seem to be alternating between speaking for yourself and speaking for an entire movement whenever it's convenient.
Anyways, i'm kind of sympathetic to what you're saying. Bernie was my preferred candidate by far, I voted for him in my primary, and it's depressing to think that incrementalism will win the race. However, I think it's dangerous to say that Biden is as bad as Trump, let alone worse. If you care about basic human rights, a $15 minimum wage, most deportations being halted, free public college for those making an income of less than $125k, and a (admittedly kind of vague) plan to decrease drug prices by driving up competition with other nations' drug products through importation, are all steps in the right direction. You say that Biden has to earn the vote of progressives, and that they don't owe it to him, and that's right! Correct! That's exactly what he's trying to do. That's why, no matter how much Biden's base might not like Sanders or how much Sanders base don't want to face defeat, we have to look at this in the context of how much Sander's movement has actual changed political discourse. Biden wouldn't be proposing bankruptcy reform or free college if progressives weren't in the race, sure, but that's why it's important to recognize when a candidate is trying to do better and represent a bigger tent of the party. I will vote for Joe Biden because I think he has done enough to convince me and perhaps even some other left-leaning people (though I don't claim to speak for other Sanders supporters) that he will enact more progressive change in his administration, even if they will be compromises, nonetheless they will be steps forward. I do agree though that people shouldn't have to vote for candidates they don't like, that you don't owe anything to the Democratic party, and I also think that the "lesser of two evils" concept represents a huge weakness in a two-party system. But, to expand on that concept non-literally, I don't think Joe Biden is really a lesser evil, or even a neutral force, but rather more a mild good. I don't want to see all of the elections in my life time be an infinite cycle of modest progress, but in the here and now Joe is the clear pick over Trump.
And, as much as it sucks to admit, it's not exactly like most people who are both 1) being realistic and 2) Sanders supporters, are actually voting for Sanders because they believe that all of his policies in their purest form will pass. They won't and wouldn't. There has to be a break, a compromise, somewhere in there. It's just that I believe his compromises would be farther left.
Last edited by AngryLittleAlchemist - on 16 March 2020