While Biden won the state with more than 618,000 votes, more than 100,000 Michigan Democratic primary voters cast ballots for "uncommitted" in the race, enough to pick up the pair of delegates.
I’m genuinely surprised and disgusted by the bloodthirsty warmongering of the majority of elected democrats. I’m a far left Jew, not that that should matter at all, but I feel like a lot of elected officials look to people like me for permission to get all riled up and hungry for genocide. But we as Jews should be the loudest voices in the room calling for a complete and immediate ceasefire and immediate negotiations to get the Palestinians the state they obviously deserve. Because, you know, “never forget”….or some such clearly disingenuous aphorism.
It’s despicable to me that anyone, let alone Jews in Israel and beyond, thinks that what Israel is doing is remotely acceptable. We will never get back the moral high ground.
Part of the problem is the lack of distinction between Zionism and Judaism, and even after that the distinction between forms and levels of Zionism. For instance there’s been a lot of Orthodox Jews in and outside of Israel who protest against this conflict for varying reasons, most on a genuine moral basis though some for more mundane religious reasons. This isn’t even to mention all the Jewish leftists who protest against the conflict as well solely on humanitarian grounds.
Unfortunately what doesn’t get covered by the Neoliberal and Corporate (read: Moderate Fascist) media is all the suppression of these protests, especially within Israel by the Fascist Likud party-led government. Haaretz will occasionally do some real reporting and cover this kind of stuff from inside Israel but most Israeli left voices are strongly suppressed within Israel itself, and leftist parties are pushed to the margins of the Knesset. Because of this marginalization, the loudest anti-war Jewish voices come from outside Israel itself, where they have no direct influence over it, but at least are less likely to be jailed for their protests.
I’m not a fan of state sponsored genocide either. but I can only blame progressives for this situation. for the progressive base, if a candidate doesn’t hit every. single. one. of their pet issues, they won’t vote. and if they do vote but their candidate loses they get all upset and tune out and snipe at what the actual elected democrats are (or are not) doing.
instead of tuning out, they should have been getting involved either running for elected office or running for local party positions themselves. look at the republican party. they didn’t all of a sudden go fringe batshit crazy overnight. they built up a bench of insane by running for stuff on the local levels and taking over the party from the inside.
if you want change, y’all are going to have to put in the sweat equity and work for it. just voting is not going to be sufficient anymore. and this is something that I have never seen the progressive base do when they have the numbers to do it. I can definitely tell you that withholding your vote is a 100% guarantee that none of your issues get addressed because the thinking in the party will be, “this bloc of voters are not reliable. putting in the resources and doing what a group of flakey voters wants is a waste of time and money. best to focus on people who are reliable and reliably voting for us already.” and if the people who actually vote say our foreign policy is fine, that’s what the party is going to do.
That’s weird, I blame the people committing and/or supporting the Genocide. But I guess making a strawman out of Progressives behavior is another option.
I am part of the progressive base, far left of it on most days, and I vote in every single election for the candidates who reflect my values, but I also think a lot about who I think has the best chance of winning. That means more than I’d like I end up voting with the mainstream neoliberals because I’m pragmatic and understand that progress is incremental and hard. But I always vote.
I think a lot of progressives are realists, and understand that you campaign on what you want, but you govern with what you have. That means always pushing back against and criticizing actual elected democrats, even if they’re my preferred candidate. That’s how a healthy democracy is supposed to work. Of course we’re critical of the other side, but since we actually have the slightest influence over elected officials in our party, it make sense that we’d always try to keep them honest and pull them as far to our side as we can while they’re in office, wielding the power our vote gave them.
I think to some extent we’re saying the same thing, I don’t think people should withhold their vote. Except maybe in primaries, depending on the situation that’s probably fine. But as a part of the base you’re describing, I think most people are pretty smart with how they vote, and at least the progressives I know are all pretty pragmatic.
And yet their response is going to be to help get an actual Nazi dictator (or at least wannabe) elected.
There is NO scenario where this turns out good for them. Do they actually think Trump is going to help their cause? He is more likely to just. give Israel nukes…
In all likelihood, Israel already has nukes so that’s pretty much a non-issue. Trump would likely give Israel just as much or more support (the only confounding factor is that he’s extremely cheap but US money isn’t his own money so this may not be a factor), but when a genocide is occurring and both candidates are pursuing a course of complicity, degrees of complicity approach meaninglessness. Your best bet is to reshuffle the deck in order to get a candidate who won’t support genocide. Biden should be primaried, but the DNC functionaries likely won’t permit this in practice (of course in theory the primary will proceed, just without party support or acknowledgement), so the sooner he’s out of office the sooner he can be replaced by someone who might not be comfortable with complicity in a genocide.
That’s nice in theory, but the reality is, regardless of what the main stream media says. Trump is an EXTREME threat to the future of democracy in this country.
This is a fuck around and find out moment. He wins and you won’t have a chance to “reshuffle” anything now or in 4 years…
For starters, the democracy that permits a candidate like Trump to end it is perhaps a democracy worth ending, especially if it’s a democracy that provides so poorly for its people that they genuinely believe he’s worth electing.
Second, I think it’s hyperbolic. Even with Jan. 6th, he still came nowhere near the coup that mainstream media made it out to be. The people who entered the capitol weren’t hardened rebels or dissidents. There were a few with some means mixed in, but by and large they behaved like tourists, with some acting as vandals, and largely incited (read “entrapped”) and monitored by the FBI. This also isn’t out of character for the FBI, as it had plenty of Muslims they entrapped in the years following 9/11, including one man who was intellectually disabled.
Third and lastly, obviously the Democratic party doesn’t think this is a big emergency, since they’ve had virtually no reaction to polls indicating Biden’s flailing numbers. If they thought this was an emergency then they might do something like encourage primary candidates or for him to step down. If they’re so confident Trump isn’t getting reelected, then I am too.
It’s almost like complicity in a genocide might potentially be unpopular in some segments of the American public. Crazy.
I’m genuinely surprised and disgusted by the bloodthirsty warmongering of the majority of elected democrats. I’m a far left Jew, not that that should matter at all, but I feel like a lot of elected officials look to people like me for permission to get all riled up and hungry for genocide. But we as Jews should be the loudest voices in the room calling for a complete and immediate ceasefire and immediate negotiations to get the Palestinians the state they obviously deserve. Because, you know, “never forget”….or some such clearly disingenuous aphorism.
It’s despicable to me that anyone, let alone Jews in Israel and beyond, thinks that what Israel is doing is remotely acceptable. We will never get back the moral high ground.
Part of the problem is the lack of distinction between Zionism and Judaism, and even after that the distinction between forms and levels of Zionism. For instance there’s been a lot of Orthodox Jews in and outside of Israel who protest against this conflict for varying reasons, most on a genuine moral basis though some for more mundane religious reasons. This isn’t even to mention all the Jewish leftists who protest against the conflict as well solely on humanitarian grounds.
Unfortunately what doesn’t get covered by the Neoliberal and Corporate (read: Moderate Fascist) media is all the suppression of these protests, especially within Israel by the Fascist Likud party-led government. Haaretz will occasionally do some real reporting and cover this kind of stuff from inside Israel but most Israeli left voices are strongly suppressed within Israel itself, and leftist parties are pushed to the margins of the Knesset. Because of this marginalization, the loudest anti-war Jewish voices come from outside Israel itself, where they have no direct influence over it, but at least are less likely to be jailed for their protests.
I’m not a fan of state sponsored genocide either. but I can only blame progressives for this situation. for the progressive base, if a candidate doesn’t hit every. single. one. of their pet issues, they won’t vote. and if they do vote but their candidate loses they get all upset and tune out and snipe at what the actual elected democrats are (or are not) doing.
instead of tuning out, they should have been getting involved either running for elected office or running for local party positions themselves. look at the republican party. they didn’t all of a sudden go fringe batshit crazy overnight. they built up a bench of insane by running for stuff on the local levels and taking over the party from the inside.
if you want change, y’all are going to have to put in the sweat equity and work for it. just voting is not going to be sufficient anymore. and this is something that I have never seen the progressive base do when they have the numbers to do it. I can definitely tell you that withholding your vote is a 100% guarantee that none of your issues get addressed because the thinking in the party will be, “this bloc of voters are not reliable. putting in the resources and doing what a group of flakey voters wants is a waste of time and money. best to focus on people who are reliable and reliably voting for us already.” and if the people who actually vote say our foreign policy is fine, that’s what the party is going to do.
That’s weird, I blame the people committing and/or supporting the Genocide. But I guess making a strawman out of Progressives behavior is another option.
Centrists control the party. Naturally this means that progressives are to blame for everything.
I am part of the progressive base, far left of it on most days, and I vote in every single election for the candidates who reflect my values, but I also think a lot about who I think has the best chance of winning. That means more than I’d like I end up voting with the mainstream neoliberals because I’m pragmatic and understand that progress is incremental and hard. But I always vote.
I think a lot of progressives are realists, and understand that you campaign on what you want, but you govern with what you have. That means always pushing back against and criticizing actual elected democrats, even if they’re my preferred candidate. That’s how a healthy democracy is supposed to work. Of course we’re critical of the other side, but since we actually have the slightest influence over elected officials in our party, it make sense that we’d always try to keep them honest and pull them as far to our side as we can while they’re in office, wielding the power our vote gave them.
I think to some extent we’re saying the same thing, I don’t think people should withhold their vote. Except maybe in primaries, depending on the situation that’s probably fine. But as a part of the base you’re describing, I think most people are pretty smart with how they vote, and at least the progressives I know are all pretty pragmatic.
And yet their response is going to be to help get an actual Nazi dictator (or at least wannabe) elected.
There is NO scenario where this turns out good for them. Do they actually think Trump is going to help their cause? He is more likely to just. give Israel nukes…
In all likelihood, Israel already has nukes so that’s pretty much a non-issue. Trump would likely give Israel just as much or more support (the only confounding factor is that he’s extremely cheap but US money isn’t his own money so this may not be a factor), but when a genocide is occurring and both candidates are pursuing a course of complicity, degrees of complicity approach meaninglessness. Your best bet is to reshuffle the deck in order to get a candidate who won’t support genocide. Biden should be primaried, but the DNC functionaries likely won’t permit this in practice (of course in theory the primary will proceed, just without party support or acknowledgement), so the sooner he’s out of office the sooner he can be replaced by someone who might not be comfortable with complicity in a genocide.
That’s nice in theory, but the reality is, regardless of what the main stream media says. Trump is an EXTREME threat to the future of democracy in this country.
This is a fuck around and find out moment. He wins and you won’t have a chance to “reshuffle” anything now or in 4 years…
For starters, the democracy that permits a candidate like Trump to end it is perhaps a democracy worth ending, especially if it’s a democracy that provides so poorly for its people that they genuinely believe he’s worth electing.
Second, I think it’s hyperbolic. Even with Jan. 6th, he still came nowhere near the coup that mainstream media made it out to be. The people who entered the capitol weren’t hardened rebels or dissidents. There were a few with some means mixed in, but by and large they behaved like tourists, with some acting as vandals, and largely incited (read “entrapped”) and monitored by the FBI. This also isn’t out of character for the FBI, as it had plenty of Muslims they entrapped in the years following 9/11, including one man who was intellectually disabled.
Third and lastly, obviously the Democratic party doesn’t think this is a big emergency, since they’ve had virtually no reaction to polls indicating Biden’s flailing numbers. If they thought this was an emergency then they might do something like encourage primary candidates or for him to step down. If they’re so confident Trump isn’t getting reelected, then I am too.
It’s fine to want your elected representatives to be good people. But I wouldn’t count on any politician at that level