Yeah looks like Joe Biden isn't gonna go for M4A, so I will not be voting for him. If I vote for him I'm voting against my people. I will not support any oppressor, we have suffered enough.

Quick question: Do you live in a swing state, and are you still planning to vote for down-ballot races?

In any case, yeah, M4A would be the best option. It's better than the entire idea of having health insurance tied to employment for most people. But we aren't getting it within the next few years, and we wouldn't be getting it even if Sanders was President, either, because it would get filibustered to death in the Senate. We only got the ACA because the Senate Dems managed to pass it during the brief window that they had the 60-vote filibuster-proof majority (the final vote was 60-39, completely 100% down party lines). Maybe, if the Senate Dems changed the rules to where a filibuster could be broken by a simple majority, it would work, but even that's a tall order. And that's assuming the Dems re-take the Senate in the first place (we need to flip four GOP-held seats for a majority, which is going to be tough given the map for this year).

Speaking of the ACA, yeah, it was far from ideal, but it was much better than what we had before. It cut the number of uninsured people in half. And the Democrats would try to strengthen and expand its provisions. As opposed to the Republicans who want the ACA gone in its entirety.

I have muscular dystrophy. It makes even the simple act of moving difficult much of the time, and I'm in near-constant pain. I'm on Social Security disability, which means I do qualify for Medicare. Before I had Medicare, I had no insurance at all, and even with Medicare my options are limited and it doesn't fully cover everything. So I do understand the need for health insurance and the desire for it to be truly universal and not be tied to employment. But people like Donald Trump and the GOP want to gut everything. They've spend the last decade trying their hardest to undermine the ACA at every turn. They've long wanted to kick as many people off of SSDI as possible. They want every single safety net program gone, and even if they may not get that result, they'll do anything and everything in their power to undermine those programs and make it as hard as possible for anyone to benefit from them. Ever since Trump took office, I've been worried that I'd have my SSDI (and thus also my Medicare coverage) taken away from me and that I'd have to go back to work full-time, even though I wouldn't even be physically capable of doing so (and because I didn't spend enough time thinking about my future back in the 90s, I'm not qualified to do anything other than low-wage grunt work jobs, so a cushy office job is probably out of the question). As recently as February he's been talking about cuts to SSDI. It's only because the GOP doesn't have control of the House and a supermajority in the Senate that that's not likely to happen, but they're still trying.

The Democrats' sluggish, reformist approach to health care is frustrating. But it's realistic. We will likely get to M4A eventually, but something so ambitious and large-scale won't happen overnight, and not even with a "real" progressive sitting in the White House in 2021. It will take continued pressure to keep moving the party and the nation as a whole in a leftward direction on policy issues like this, a process that has been underway and still ongoing. We need to get this country to the point where even many Republicans would be risking career suicide to oppose it. And most importantly, it will take actually winning elections. We need to gain and retain a supermajority in the Senate. We need to retain a majority in the House (which takes a lot of effort as long as aggressive GOP gerrymanders exist). And, yes, we need a Democrat in the White House. We can't even begin to move the nation forward if the Republicans are still calling the shots.

Meanwhile, the GOP doesn't think the government has any responsibility to help the citizenry at all. If it were up to them, the ACA, Medicare, and Medicaid would be gone. They wish America would go back to the days before the New Deal. They would throw people like me under the bus in a heartbeat if they thought they could get away with it. Their policies are at their heart Social Darwinism. It's only because of legislative obstacles and lack of popular support that they can't just do away with the safety net in its entirety. And that's something they're trying to work on. Their propaganda arms in talk radio and Fox News have spend decades trying shape popular opinion in incredibly dishonest ways, attempting to convince as many people as possible that government solutions to national problems are literal communism, and that the path to freedom begins with dismantling the welfare state (which would disproportionately stick it to those they deem "the other" in the process, so win-win in their book).

So yeah, I wholly reject the idea that Democrats and Republicans are essentially the same, because they are most certainly not. I reject the idea that we should only vote for the "ideal progressive," the social democrat that promises to bring about radical, fundamental change right here, right now. With Biden as president, I may not get everything I want, but at least I can sleep comfortably at night not worried that my main source of income, along with my health insurance, will be snatched from me by a far-right party that wholly believes in "Sink-or-swim/I've got mine, Jack/Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps." And a lot of people felt similarly in 2018, as Republican threats against the ACA mobilized a lot of voters to vote Democrat, flipping the House blue for the first time in eight years (and the 2007-2010 period was the only time between 1995 and 2018 that the Dems held the House).

And that's only a single issue right there. I'm also thinking about every other issue, including issues that don't directly affect me one iota, from climate change to reproductive rights to the minimum wage and so on and so forth (just look at the list of questions I posed a few days ago in my last post in this thread). For all their faults, the Democrats would still be infinitely preferable than any Republican. When faced with two options, even if one isn't an optimal or even ideal options, it's always preferable to pick the least bad option. Some people think "Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil" when they should be thinking "Not voting for the lesser of two evils is essentially helping the greater of two evils win." And really, we're not even faced with two political evils. We're faced with A) a less-than-ideal option that may only give us some of what we want but won't work to undermine what achievements we've already made, and B) an option that is catastrophically bad and the exact polar opposite in every way of everything progressives stand for.

As I've made it abundantly clear, this November we have two choices and only two: "Vote to remove Trump from office" or "Don't vote to remove Trump from office." I've been saying for many, many months now that the only way Trump, the weakest and most vulnerable incumbent in decades, can win re-election is if progressive voters repeat the same mistakes they did in 2000 and 2016, refusing to show up and vote Democrat because they couldn't even stomach the idea of pulling the lever to vote for a moderate. They were primary contributors to us having both George W. Bush and Donald Trump as President, and they can't pretend they weren't. If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: Elections in America are zero-sum contests. Every progressive that doesn't show up, or shows up and doesn't vote Democrat, puts the Republicans one vote closer to victory. I will continue to make this point as many times as I feel is necessary, because it's a point that needs to be made.

Every progressive that's still thinking of not voting Biden really needs to take a step back, look at the big picture, and ask themselves if it would be worth it to have four more years of Donald J. Trump instead of a Biden presidency. They need to ask themselves if it's rational and reasonable to refuse anything less than the best, even if it risks subjecting the United States to continued Republican governance (if you can even call it "governance"). They need to look at what Trump and the Republicans have done in the past 3 years and ask themselves "Was any of this preferable to a Hillary presidency, and is its continuation preferable to a Biden presidency?" It should be obvious how I would answer those questions. I don't want Trump in the White House. He is the worst president in probably a century. I don't want Republicans to win elections, period. It's simple calculus, a cost-benefit analysis. It's me honestly answering the question "Which of these two options is preferable to the other?" Even Bernie Sanders himself realizes that not voting Biden would be irresponsible given that Trump is the most dangerous President in modern history. As a progressive social democrat type, I may share your opinions on policy matters, but I have serious objections with how many progressives are approaching electoral strategy, considering said strategy is essentially "help the Republicans win by not voting Democratic."

I think shaming someone that has been raped or directly affected because of Biden's power and influence or has had someone die bc of lack of health insurance to vote for him is extremely disgusting and immoral. Do what you want but it's 2020, we're done with vote shaming. Might as well yell at a homeless person for not voting Biden and blame them as the reason we have Trump.

Instead of trying to shame poor and working class Americans for not voting for political elites that are greedy, corrupt, bigoted and dangerous. You should shame the people in power that got us into this mess to begin with not those of us that have suffered at their hands. After all they are the real ones to blame. I'm not into putting party over people, no one should "pledge their loyalty" to a party over the people's best interests. The Democrats and Republicans have disillusioned and disenfranchised millions of Americans because of their greed, corruption, and bigotry. It's on them to change their platform, policies, and way of governance to attract voters. I'm definitely not going Republican (bc I'm against everything they stand for) but the Democrats have lost me, I'm done with them.

If you feel good about voting for Biden and you believe that's the best choice for you, go ahead and vote with gusto. No judgement. But for a copious amount of reasons I cannot and will not vote for him.

Here's a video that you might find helpful.

I think shaming someone that has been raped or directly affected because of Biden's power and influence or has had someone die bc of lack of health insurance to vote for him is extremely disgusting and immoral. Do what you want but it's 2020, we're done with vote shaming. Might as well yell at a homeless person for not voting Biden and blame them as the reason we have Trump.

Instead of trying to shame poor and working class Americans for not voting for political elites that are greedy, corrupt, bigoted and dangerous. You should shame the people in power that got us into this mess to begin with not those of us that have suffered at their hands. After all they are the real ones to blame. I'm not into putting party over people, no one should "pledge their loyalty" to a party over the people's best interests. The Democrats and Republicans have disillusioned and disenfranchised millions of Americans because of their greed, corruption, and bigotry. It's on them to change their platform, policies, and way of governance to attract voters. I'm definitely not going Republican (bc I'm against everything they stand for) but the Democrats have lost me, I'm done with them.

If you feel good about voting for Biden and you believe that's the best choice for you, go ahead and vote with gusto. No judgement. But for a copious amount of reasons I cannot and will not vote for him.

Here's a video that you might find helpful.

It is pretty clear that you never, for a single moment, since you joined the thread, had the slightest intention to vote for a Democrat not named Bernie. Might as well get off your high horse, own up to it, and stop being dishonest.

For you it is all a game about blue against red and you want your team winning and see everyone not working for that goal as an enemy. For many people politics influence their life, often in a massive way. And they aren't so much on blue or red team, as on support for some policies that would improve their lifes. So important talking points about Biden was his stance, that he would veto M4A even if it passed Senate, but also his cooperation with Sanders in building comitees for different policy areas. These talking points wouldn't matter at all, if people really only considered voting for Sanders or not. In all actuality they would support Biden - if he softens on policies helping people.

What you do is alienate people from the democrats with your 'either for us or against us' stance and your open toxicity for everyone even asking for better policies from democrats. That will hurt the democratic party, because in reality only some people are as strongly committed to a party as you. Many are leaning because the policies of democrats in this instance are considered better in many cases, but often enough still not good. What you do is drive these people away from democrats so they are becoming 3rd-party voters, independents or non-voters. So if you wanna anyone blame for democrats losing elections - consider starting with yourself.