I wouldn't even talk about progressive vs. moderate with you though. Yang's UBI idea is more progressive than anything Bernie has to offer. Yet you like him anyway. And if UBI can work, than so can Medicare For All. I think some part of you knows this. What you don't like about "progressives" that you think "moderates" are better on is the identity politics issue. Face it, that's why Yang appeals to you so much when he has the most expensive, revolutionary, decidedly un-moderate plan of the entire group. He has myriad other plans as well, many of them not moderate at all. Yet you like him anyway, he's the most interesting to you. That's because he finds ways to make big ideas be about everyone, and doesn't focus on just helping one group or another with their problems. The very nature of UBI would mean that everyone would pay in, and everyone would get out, of the UBI program. Sure, what they get out wouldn't make a difference to a rich man, while it would make a world of difference to a poor man, but that's not the point. Everybody helps as best they can to support the system, and everybody gets out of it, so that everybody feels involved, and everybody knows that when the chips are down and they're counting on the system, the system has their back. Yang has tons of appeal to Trump voters and progressive voters alike, and to the best I'm able to figure out, that is why.

Not fond of Biden?

Yeah, people don't get that about the baggage. Biden has baggage, and while Trump has baggage too, it doesn't matter for him, because what is baggage for a Democrat isn't baggage for a Republican. That means Trump will be able to exploit Biden's baggage to discourage his potential voters from voting for him. They likely won't vote for Trump, but they might be discouraged into not voting at all. That's how Trump beat Clinton. Not many people were so mad at the Dems for screwing Bernie that they'd actually vote for Trump. But when Trump said that Bernie got screwed, and that this means the Dems were corrupt, and that Bernie was a sellout loser for endorsing the woman who cheated him out of the nomination, that got through to a lot more people, and while they didn't usually vote Trump, it often discouraged them from voting Clinton. While the specifics would be different this time, Trump would be able to do it again with Biden. He could call Biden Creepy Joe or something and harp on some of his creepy with women baggage, and even though Trump is almost certainly a straight up rapist and an admitted sexual assaulter, and thus it'd be crazy hypocritical of him, that hypocrisy wouldn't hurt him with his base because his base has already decided not to believe or care about anything bad about him and vote for him anyway. Meanwhile, Biden's base is made of of Democrats, who do hold their own candidates to certain standards, and don't hide from reality, and thus could be discouraged from voting for him.

This is why Don is teflon. His entire coalition is made up of voters who won't ever care what he does, who he couldn't turn away from him even by publicly murdering someone. It's also why no Democrat is teflon, or at least not nearly as teflon as Trump is. Democratic voters have principles to which they hold candidates to as a standard, Republicans only standards for their candidates are the degree to which they uphold a tribalistic, almost religion-like brand. There are tribalistic thinkers on the Dem side too, and those voters tend to be Biden voters, which is why Biden seems like teflon compared to the other candidates. However, that teflonesque nature won't hold up in the general, because Trump is a whole other level of teflon from Biden, not at all due to any individual characteristic of either candidate, but rather to the characteristics of their voter bases. Trump is teflon to his entire coalition of voters, because his entire coalition of voters thinks tribally. Biden is teflon to a small subset of Democrats, because only a small subset of Democratic voters think tribally to the degree that Republicans do. This is why the electability argument for Biden is just wrong, and is a recipe for a repeat of 2016.

I don't even know what the hell I am. I don't consider myself a progressive, a liberal or libertarian, a moderate, or a conservative.

I think people broadly perceive me as a progressive because I'm most inclined to vote for progressive candidates. That's mostly just because of their economic views. (I'm a socialist. A real one, not a Bernie Sanders "socialist".) But if the Republicans were running just a normal conservative like a Joni Ernst (or maybe even a Justin Amash type libertarian) type instead of a tyrannical freak like Trump who's more loyal to Moscow than to this country or a Christian theocrat loon like Pence, the choice between that hypothetical (hitherto) normal Republican and say Joe Biden would be about even in my mind. I'm completely in favor of the so-called "crazy" bathroom bills over which the left has meltdowns and state boycotts (and which, incidentally, are becoming steadily more popular in the polls), I'm totally supportive of the states that have declared pornography a public health crisis, I'm a NATO and EU supporter, generally against trade wars, possess what I like to call a rational fear of conservative Islam (I have way more to lose from it than most of you do) alongside religious fundamentalism generally, am not in favor of just legalizing everything, I'm against withdrawing the last of our troops from Syria and Afghanistan in the absence of signed agreements in those countries guaranteeing the safety of the Syrian Kurds and the continuance of the basic rights of women respectively, and I believe in political free speech, including online, on college campuses, and just in public spaces generally, so it'd be a tough choice in my mind. I'm not as socially progressive as I guess people often perceive me.

I'm a socialist, a lesbian feminist, an environmentalist, I'm pro-immigration, I'm pro-choice and a supporter of reasonable gun control policies, and I'm against the death penalty and mass incarceration, and I think people get an unbalanced perspective on me because of those things. I'm a leftist, but not a caricature. The term "progressive" carries a certain connotation that I'm not sure accurately describes me.

It's a little interesting seeing the difference in the US perspective as to what is "odd" in terms of politics. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kristen Gillibrand are in touch with the political positions of mainstream Western Civilization. It's the more neo-liberal types who are trying to push for laissez-faire unregulated markets that are the odd ones: this is the policy to establish third-world style corporate imperialism and its predecessors (as it has been since the dawn of modern Imperialism, over five hundred years ago). The Western identity established in the enlightenment was when governments became representatives of the people, not of business models and nobles/merchant castes. Neoliberalism and neoliberal politicians are out of sync with Western Civilization. Nothing Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or Kristen Gillibrand are proposing are odd, even as far as the US goes: Bernie Sanders is not going outside of the parameters of the 1940s-1970s economic policies aside from universal healthcare, which is commonplace in the West. Even Canada, which is right next door to the US, has universal healthcare (for like 50 years) and serves everyone despite the fact that there is a GIANT greed-based market sucking up its doctors existing just beside them; something a universal healthcare system in the US would not even have to contend with.

To me, the big oddballs are Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang. Marianne Williamson seems to be heavily interested in fulfilling the unfinished US Revolution; Andrew Yang wants UBI. These are still somewhat radical ideas as far as Western civilization goes, even though the US revolution began something like 250 years ago. It is one of the most progressive leftist movements of all time, a product of enlightenment thinking which we still have yet to see fully envisioned: and aims further than most European nations even dared to strive for as a whole... I shouldn't even be trying to articulate this, go listen to Christopher Hitchens about it.

Anyway, speaking of Yang and Williamson, they have an interesting ~45 minute conversation (admittedly, I only just started listening to).

Note: the audio isn't well balanced and Williamson is in a room with really bad acoustics; that plus the fact that she has a cold. My apologies.

I don't even know what the hell I am. I don't consider myself a progressive, a liberal or libertarian, a moderate, or a conservative.

I think people broadly perceive me as a progressive because I'm most inclined to vote for progressive candidates. That's mostly just because of their economic views. (I'm a socialist. A real one, not a Bernie Sanders "socialist".) But if the Republicans were running just a normal conservative like a Joni Ernst (or maybe even a Justin Amash type libertarian) type instead of a tyrannical freak like Trump who's more loyal to Moscow than to this country or a Christian theocrat loon like Pence, the choice between that hypothetical (hitherto) normal Republican and say Joe Biden would be about even in my mind. I'm completely in favor of the so-called "crazy" bathroom bills over which the left has meltdowns and state boycotts (and which, incidentally, are becoming steadily more popular in the polls), I'm totally supportive of the states that have declared pornography a public health crisis, I'm a NATO and EU supporter, generally against trade wars, possess what I like to call a rational fear of conservative Islam (I have way more to lose from it than most of you do) alongside religious fundamentalism generally, am not in favor of just legalizing everything, I'm against withdrawing the last of our troops from Syria and Afghanistan in the absence of signed agreements in those countries guaranteeing the safety of the Syrian Kurds and the continuance of the basic rights of women respectively, and I believe in political free speech, including online, on college campuses, and just in public spaces generally, so it'd be a tough choice in my mind. I'm not as socially progressive as I guess people often perceive me.

I'm a socialist, a lesbian feminist, an environmentalist, I'm pro-immigration, I'm pro-choice and a supporter of reasonable gun control policies, and I'm against the death penalty and mass incarceration, and I think people get an unbalanced perspective on me because of those things. I'm a leftist, but not a caricature. The term "progressive" carries a certain connotation that I'm not sure accurately describes me.