When "ranked choice voting" is installed, and can function as a "third party" on-the-fly, without having to reinvent the wheel. If Biden is the candidate please vote for him.
"When ranked-choice voting is installed" is not an answer. The two major parties want nothing to do with it, bc they have the FPTP system on lock. You have a definite date, or you have nothing to bargain with. No more vague "indeterminate future" promises, there's not enough trust between us and your party for that.
I’ve been mulling this over, Susan, because I agree with you for all sorts of practical reasons, and yet I don’t want to be part of a political party in which everyone is expected to follow the party line - the Dem party encompasses many different and often competing interest groups. That said, the media’s mindless babble about Biden’s age is unfair and stupidly biased - Chait has no excuse; if that’s all he can come up with, hello ChatGPT.
Setting aside the inflated egos of guys like Sanders, West, and Chait, I wonder if this is yet another example of the erosion of boundaries between public and private speech in media. Anyone who’s politically engaged will tussle over what’s best - I worked on Elizabeth Warren’s campaign, so let me tell you how unthrilled I was to join the Biden train at the time - but navigating head and heart is part of being an engaged citizen, the stuff we idealists wrestle with privately precisely because we do care. In contrast, blatting out half-baked criticism in social media and on broadcast channels contributes to inaccurate depictions of what voters actually want and will do.
I appreciate your qualms. But I’m not advocating a one-line party for all time. I’m not even advocating one line for now. I’m suggesting that this is a unique moment in our history, when public solidarity is important in a way it hasn’t been before. I’ve always appreciated the diversity within the Democratic Party. But right now is crisis time and we can’t afford the luxuries of the past. Imagine it’s not Trump but Hitler who is the Republican candidate. I would think we’d want to devote all our resources, intelligence, PR brilliance, at making sure he’s defeated, even if it means we keep our criticisms of his opposition to personal diaries and conversations with intimates. Our thoughts could still be whatever they are inclined to be, and should be whatever they are inclined to be, but developing unity of purpose in defeating him would be paramount. Trump may not be advocating mass exterminations….but neither did Hitler at the beginning. And we’ve already seen what he’s capable of—and what the GOP is capable of in retaining power. It’s war, baby, and war calls for drastic measures. We have to stop behaving as though this coming election is “normal.” There’s been too much normalization of the once-unthinkable since 2016.
I really appreciate your candor and sharing your experience and thought process regarding the students that harassed you.
There really is such a tension between “not sharing every damn thing” and “not self-censoring to be a team player”.
Personally, i’m a little bummed that you didn’t share more about the incident with your students at the time, b/c there’s been such discourse on our team that basically denied (still denies) that there even is any sort of negative dynamic going on at college campuses. But I completely understand not wanting your voice to be co-opted by the fools trying to distort what’s going on.
This isn’t meant as a criticism of your choice, just a reflection on how hard this is.
Yeah...that thought experiment of imagining Hitler as the potential Republican nominee instead of Trump puts it in perspective - and of course I can’t stand the media churn. So, keep writing, Susan. Btw, Frank Bruni did a recent column deriding all the focus on Biden s age.
BTW, just an aside: Biden wasn’t my first choice either. But I’ve come to see he was the right person for the moment. And unless something drastic happens, still is.
Just have to say that today's news — NYT running a story at the top of the digital feed about how Dems are nervous about Biden's polling numbers + McCarthy allowing impeachment inquiries to go forward in three house committees — underscores your main point. You hit a nerve here, Susan, but I'm glad you're pushing back. Me, I'm happy to push back on the mainstream media; they oscillate between desperate ploys to keep audiences and chest-pounding about journalistic integrity.
Yes, there are many ironies in our situation today. I wouldn’t describe them as oxymorons, I’d describe them as the paradoxes of a grave historical moment that calls for less than “pure” strategies.
The hilarity continues. Don’t even know where to begin with what you just said. I think I’ll leave you with this, what you just said reminds me of the kind of things I have heard far right figures say to justify their erosions of democratic processes because of “unprecedented historical urgency.” Almost all atrocities and sacrificing of freedoms and narrowing of democracy comes inside this Trojan horse. You are heading down a dangerous path, one that leads to validating how “Blue MAGA” is alive and well in the neoliberal Democratic Party. Another wing of imperialist American hegemony as it always has been.
If you support democrats you support one half of the apparatus of American hegemony. Sorry, your president is a war monger corporate puppet too! I can’t wait to encourage everyone I know to vote third party this election, or not vote at all, using this article as an example of how anti-democratic Democrats are. Thanks for this great example I can use to discourage voting, because even voters don’t really believe in “democracy” anymore.
Yeah, they're gonna try and whip votes with this "save democracy" stuff until the end of time, even they want none of that "democracy" internally. If superdelegates won't do it, and blacklisting consultants won't do it, and siccing pet super-PACs on challengers from the left won't do it, there's always former President Obama's telephone calls. And they call that "democracy".
Voting for any 3rd party is pretty much a kiss of death for the façade of democracy that exists in the U.S., so Biden will still get my begrudging vote from abroad so long as Georgia will count it (which is questionable given their history of finding any and every excuse to disenfranchise voters).
I'm one of the many millions of Americans who are deeply unhappy about the ghastly options under the two-party system, but I also know enough about how it's been rigged from the beginning to keep out 3rd-party candidates (which is why I didn't run as an Independent), so I hold no delusions about West having a chance to do anything in 2024 but hand the win to a Republican. Then, it's Game Over. Besides, he suggests Ukraine should compromise with the Russian aggressors, so he's got some deeply flawed ideas, too, in my opinion. In fact, even Biden has him beat in that regard, even if for the wrong reasons.
Sanders is too agreeable with capitalism being a candidate for reform for my preference these days, but I don't see why he, one of the few politicians who has consistently demonstrated his integrity, should be expected to throw it away to disingenuously praise a man who has barely earned any.
And that's the weird thing about Democrats... for some reason they just keep expecting each other, and potential (American) left-of-center voters, to magically fall in line on their own the way Republican voters seem to do. But the truth is the Republicans have had an advantage the Democrats didn't: the backing of organized religion and a mass of angry and abandoned working class folks easily scooped up by anyone who even remotely pretended to care about them. Democrats turned their backs on the only counter to that power: strong labor unions and the power of the working class that were once their members.
And that is the only reason I hope people will vote for Biden. He's imperfect, yes. He royally screwed up with the rail workers' union. But he seems headed in the right direction somewhat now.
It has been said that the reason the President matters is because they hold the power to appoint Supreme Court members (which McConnell showed isn't really true), but voting for the President matters in this election especially because the next President largely decides what kind of NLRB we get. It is critical to democracy that we install a President who will empower the NLRB to strengthen labor's power and organizing capacity. Nothing matters more than this for 2024, in my opinion.
For what it's worth, I completely dismiss anything the NY Post writer has to say as being relevant simply based on his laughable claim that "The economy is booming, especially for the poor and working class." What planet is that dude on? Certainly not Earth.
Also, anyone who accuses higher ed of being woke better stand at a safe distance if I'm drinking anything unless they want to get sprayed.
In any case, there are so many other reasons to criticize Biden that his age is just low-hanging fruit for the lazy. He's done a bit of good, and a bit of bad, so he'll leave a pretty average legacy in the end. But I don't see the Dems producing anyone more palatable in the near future, either. Don't even get me started on my feelings about Harris.
For the foreseeable future, I see the U.S. teetering on the precipice of falling from its present-day dysfunctional oligarchy into a fascist autocracy or Christian Nationalist theocracy. It will be a lot easier to drag it towards being a force for good from the present, dismal position.
No one is persuading me to throw away my vote by voting for Democrats again unless they have direct plans for a new left party that go into action 5 minutes after the November 2024 election. The Democratic Party is no fit home for the left anymore; and should be free to pursue the center-right votes it really wants. The left deserves its own agency, + it will never be allowed any under the Democratic Party's heel.
They all have plenty of complaints, feel entitled to their criticism and have an obvious lack of any accomplishments of their own, other than being critical of anyone else actually doing the work to get laws passed that advance an agenda based on protecting the regular Joes and Janes of America. “Compromise” has become a dirty word on both sides.
I just don't understand the fixation on making Sanders be who he isn't and hand wringing about how he hasn't done enough for the democrats-- I mean, really? Really?? In the end he supported Hillary, he supported Biden. He did convince probably most of his supporters (like me) that for the sake of stopping Trump, we had to let him go and vote for democrats for the time being. But both he and his supporters haven't done it with a big enough smile for y'all? And that's the problem here? That both Sanders and his supporters didn't submit fully enough, even tho he's out there stumping for Biden? He's treated like some magic totem that is selfishly hoarding all the power of the left instead of engagement with WHY he isn't criticized for his age, WHY he maintains his appeal to young, progressive voters-- because he cares about the issues we care about! Because it is time for change, radical change, it's time to admit the democrats are centrists and create a left party we can vote for with integrity. I'm an American living in the UK and I'm telling you right now the frickin' Tories are more left than American democrats on many of their policies. It's also strange to me why the light of criticism does not tend to be cast on Elizabeth Warren from dems.
I feel like there is resentment toward Sanders from democrats that won't be sated until he crawls on the ground like a worm and completely foresakes every single one of his principals. It's weird--like Bernie Sanders becoming the most centrist democrat of all time will somehow fix what is broken here? I don't think so. I would love to see any true critical engagement with Obama's legacy instead of endlessly treating him like he's beyond reproach. Obama's deliberate demolishment of the Sanders campaign, for example, is a big reason why many in the left will never return to the democrats. It's worth discussing and acknowledging, that there's more going on than just Bernie not tap dancing hard enough for the dems.
I appreciate your perspective as a supporter of Bernie’s. But I suspect you don’t know the whole story of how he sabotaged Hillary Clinton’s campaign—and didn’t do much for Elizabeth Warren, either, by the way. With all due respect, you should read my book on the 2016 election. I don’t need Bernie to abandon his “principles” (which are pretty vague—and until he got schooled by feminists and Black people, had no race or gender in his political commitments to the “working class.”) But I will never trust him to not get out of the way when he needs to.
I have respect for your writing and you have every right to your opinion and support whom you choose but I don’t think we’re going to agree here. I know the claims about his “sabotage” of Clinton and Warren. I believe from a different, and to me anyway, more valid perspective, he was sabotaged by Clinton, Warren and Obama. I think he’s become a scapegoat for an entrenched pseudo left who is more invested in holding on to power through embracing identity politics and their own underdog victimhood than embracing real change. And I believe it’s because of that, not Sanders, that we are going to see the collapse of democracy and possibly the American union of states in my lifetime
I think so! I know there will be people who find my thinking on this anti-democratic. But based on the past, these things (e.g. in this case, the growing dissing of Biden among Democrats) can develop into runaway disaster unless they are confronted early. And we can’t afford another disaster like (actually, worse than) 2016.
Nor do we need the very self-important Cornell West trying to chime in with nonsense about a "third party". Not now, not t h i s election.
Which one then? We know your party is gonna pull this same game in '28; bc it "worked last time".
Every "not now" better come with an exact "when", by date, or else your "now" is never; and your "not now" is worthless.
When "ranked choice voting" is installed, and can function as a "third party" on-the-fly, without having to reinvent the wheel. If Biden is the candidate please vote for him.
"When ranked-choice voting is installed" is not an answer. The two major parties want nothing to do with it, bc they have the FPTP system on lock. You have a definite date, or you have nothing to bargain with. No more vague "indeterminate future" promises, there's not enough trust between us and your party for that.
Indeed undercutting Biden when the option is an idiotic & sociopathic madman is a fools game. https://samray.substack.com/p/trumpism-is-narcissism
I’ve been mulling this over, Susan, because I agree with you for all sorts of practical reasons, and yet I don’t want to be part of a political party in which everyone is expected to follow the party line - the Dem party encompasses many different and often competing interest groups. That said, the media’s mindless babble about Biden’s age is unfair and stupidly biased - Chait has no excuse; if that’s all he can come up with, hello ChatGPT.
Setting aside the inflated egos of guys like Sanders, West, and Chait, I wonder if this is yet another example of the erosion of boundaries between public and private speech in media. Anyone who’s politically engaged will tussle over what’s best - I worked on Elizabeth Warren’s campaign, so let me tell you how unthrilled I was to join the Biden train at the time - but navigating head and heart is part of being an engaged citizen, the stuff we idealists wrestle with privately precisely because we do care. In contrast, blatting out half-baked criticism in social media and on broadcast channels contributes to inaccurate depictions of what voters actually want and will do.
I appreciate your qualms. But I’m not advocating a one-line party for all time. I’m not even advocating one line for now. I’m suggesting that this is a unique moment in our history, when public solidarity is important in a way it hasn’t been before. I’ve always appreciated the diversity within the Democratic Party. But right now is crisis time and we can’t afford the luxuries of the past. Imagine it’s not Trump but Hitler who is the Republican candidate. I would think we’d want to devote all our resources, intelligence, PR brilliance, at making sure he’s defeated, even if it means we keep our criticisms of his opposition to personal diaries and conversations with intimates. Our thoughts could still be whatever they are inclined to be, and should be whatever they are inclined to be, but developing unity of purpose in defeating him would be paramount. Trump may not be advocating mass exterminations….but neither did Hitler at the beginning. And we’ve already seen what he’s capable of—and what the GOP is capable of in retaining power. It’s war, baby, and war calls for drastic measures. We have to stop behaving as though this coming election is “normal.” There’s been too much normalization of the once-unthinkable since 2016.
I really appreciate your candor and sharing your experience and thought process regarding the students that harassed you.
There really is such a tension between “not sharing every damn thing” and “not self-censoring to be a team player”.
Personally, i’m a little bummed that you didn’t share more about the incident with your students at the time, b/c there’s been such discourse on our team that basically denied (still denies) that there even is any sort of negative dynamic going on at college campuses. But I completely understand not wanting your voice to be co-opted by the fools trying to distort what’s going on.
This isn’t meant as a criticism of your choice, just a reflection on how hard this is.
Thanks for the restack @Heather Murray!
Yeah...that thought experiment of imagining Hitler as the potential Republican nominee instead of Trump puts it in perspective - and of course I can’t stand the media churn. So, keep writing, Susan. Btw, Frank Bruni did a recent column deriding all the focus on Biden s age.
I’d like to read that. Do you have a link or info so I can look it up?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/11/opinion/biden-trump-age.html
Thanks!!
BTW, just an aside: Biden wasn’t my first choice either. But I’ve come to see he was the right person for the moment. And unless something drastic happens, still is.
Just have to say that today's news — NYT running a story at the top of the digital feed about how Dems are nervous about Biden's polling numbers + McCarthy allowing impeachment inquiries to go forward in three house committees — underscores your main point. You hit a nerve here, Susan, but I'm glad you're pushing back. Me, I'm happy to push back on the mainstream media; they oscillate between desperate ploys to keep audiences and chest-pounding about journalistic integrity.
A laughably hilarious premise that you are showing that you support “democracy” by telling candidates not to run. Truly an unparalleled oxymoron.
Yes, there are many ironies in our situation today. I wouldn’t describe them as oxymorons, I’d describe them as the paradoxes of a grave historical moment that calls for less than “pure” strategies.
The hilarity continues. Don’t even know where to begin with what you just said. I think I’ll leave you with this, what you just said reminds me of the kind of things I have heard far right figures say to justify their erosions of democratic processes because of “unprecedented historical urgency.” Almost all atrocities and sacrificing of freedoms and narrowing of democracy comes inside this Trojan horse. You are heading down a dangerous path, one that leads to validating how “Blue MAGA” is alive and well in the neoliberal Democratic Party. Another wing of imperialist American hegemony as it always has been.
Yup, that’s me, the great advocate for imperialist American hegemony. I like your handle, though.
But: If “the hilarity continues,” why are you sounding so preachy?
If you support democrats you support one half of the apparatus of American hegemony. Sorry, your president is a war monger corporate puppet too! I can’t wait to encourage everyone I know to vote third party this election, or not vote at all, using this article as an example of how anti-democratic Democrats are. Thanks for this great example I can use to discourage voting, because even voters don’t really believe in “democracy” anymore.
Thank you for showing your hand so clearly.
No problem blue MAGA neolib!
Yeah, they're gonna try and whip votes with this "save democracy" stuff until the end of time, even they want none of that "democracy" internally. If superdelegates won't do it, and blacklisting consultants won't do it, and siccing pet super-PACs on challengers from the left won't do it, there's always former President Obama's telephone calls. And they call that "democracy".
Voting for any 3rd party is pretty much a kiss of death for the façade of democracy that exists in the U.S., so Biden will still get my begrudging vote from abroad so long as Georgia will count it (which is questionable given their history of finding any and every excuse to disenfranchise voters).
I'm one of the many millions of Americans who are deeply unhappy about the ghastly options under the two-party system, but I also know enough about how it's been rigged from the beginning to keep out 3rd-party candidates (which is why I didn't run as an Independent), so I hold no delusions about West having a chance to do anything in 2024 but hand the win to a Republican. Then, it's Game Over. Besides, he suggests Ukraine should compromise with the Russian aggressors, so he's got some deeply flawed ideas, too, in my opinion. In fact, even Biden has him beat in that regard, even if for the wrong reasons.
Sanders is too agreeable with capitalism being a candidate for reform for my preference these days, but I don't see why he, one of the few politicians who has consistently demonstrated his integrity, should be expected to throw it away to disingenuously praise a man who has barely earned any.
And that's the weird thing about Democrats... for some reason they just keep expecting each other, and potential (American) left-of-center voters, to magically fall in line on their own the way Republican voters seem to do. But the truth is the Republicans have had an advantage the Democrats didn't: the backing of organized religion and a mass of angry and abandoned working class folks easily scooped up by anyone who even remotely pretended to care about them. Democrats turned their backs on the only counter to that power: strong labor unions and the power of the working class that were once their members.
And that is the only reason I hope people will vote for Biden. He's imperfect, yes. He royally screwed up with the rail workers' union. But he seems headed in the right direction somewhat now.
It has been said that the reason the President matters is because they hold the power to appoint Supreme Court members (which McConnell showed isn't really true), but voting for the President matters in this election especially because the next President largely decides what kind of NLRB we get. It is critical to democracy that we install a President who will empower the NLRB to strengthen labor's power and organizing capacity. Nothing matters more than this for 2024, in my opinion.
For what it's worth, I completely dismiss anything the NY Post writer has to say as being relevant simply based on his laughable claim that "The economy is booming, especially for the poor and working class." What planet is that dude on? Certainly not Earth.
Also, anyone who accuses higher ed of being woke better stand at a safe distance if I'm drinking anything unless they want to get sprayed.
In any case, there are so many other reasons to criticize Biden that his age is just low-hanging fruit for the lazy. He's done a bit of good, and a bit of bad, so he'll leave a pretty average legacy in the end. But I don't see the Dems producing anyone more palatable in the near future, either. Don't even get me started on my feelings about Harris.
For the foreseeable future, I see the U.S. teetering on the precipice of falling from its present-day dysfunctional oligarchy into a fascist autocracy or Christian Nationalist theocracy. It will be a lot easier to drag it towards being a force for good from the present, dismal position.
A mixture of agreement and disagreement from me. But your strong and clear writing always appreciated. And your engagement with my posts!
No one is persuading me to throw away my vote by voting for Democrats again unless they have direct plans for a new left party that go into action 5 minutes after the November 2024 election. The Democratic Party is no fit home for the left anymore; and should be free to pursue the center-right votes it really wants. The left deserves its own agency, + it will never be allowed any under the Democratic Party's heel.
They all have plenty of complaints, feel entitled to their criticism and have an obvious lack of any accomplishments of their own, other than being critical of anyone else actually doing the work to get laws passed that advance an agenda based on protecting the regular Joes and Janes of America. “Compromise” has become a dirty word on both sides.
I just don't understand the fixation on making Sanders be who he isn't and hand wringing about how he hasn't done enough for the democrats-- I mean, really? Really?? In the end he supported Hillary, he supported Biden. He did convince probably most of his supporters (like me) that for the sake of stopping Trump, we had to let him go and vote for democrats for the time being. But both he and his supporters haven't done it with a big enough smile for y'all? And that's the problem here? That both Sanders and his supporters didn't submit fully enough, even tho he's out there stumping for Biden? He's treated like some magic totem that is selfishly hoarding all the power of the left instead of engagement with WHY he isn't criticized for his age, WHY he maintains his appeal to young, progressive voters-- because he cares about the issues we care about! Because it is time for change, radical change, it's time to admit the democrats are centrists and create a left party we can vote for with integrity. I'm an American living in the UK and I'm telling you right now the frickin' Tories are more left than American democrats on many of their policies. It's also strange to me why the light of criticism does not tend to be cast on Elizabeth Warren from dems.
I feel like there is resentment toward Sanders from democrats that won't be sated until he crawls on the ground like a worm and completely foresakes every single one of his principals. It's weird--like Bernie Sanders becoming the most centrist democrat of all time will somehow fix what is broken here? I don't think so. I would love to see any true critical engagement with Obama's legacy instead of endlessly treating him like he's beyond reproach. Obama's deliberate demolishment of the Sanders campaign, for example, is a big reason why many in the left will never return to the democrats. It's worth discussing and acknowledging, that there's more going on than just Bernie not tap dancing hard enough for the dems.
I appreciate your perspective as a supporter of Bernie’s. But I suspect you don’t know the whole story of how he sabotaged Hillary Clinton’s campaign—and didn’t do much for Elizabeth Warren, either, by the way. With all due respect, you should read my book on the 2016 election. I don’t need Bernie to abandon his “principles” (which are pretty vague—and until he got schooled by feminists and Black people, had no race or gender in his political commitments to the “working class.”) But I will never trust him to not get out of the way when he needs to.
I have respect for your writing and you have every right to your opinion and support whom you choose but I don’t think we’re going to agree here. I know the claims about his “sabotage” of Clinton and Warren. I believe from a different, and to me anyway, more valid perspective, he was sabotaged by Clinton, Warren and Obama. I think he’s become a scapegoat for an entrenched pseudo left who is more invested in holding on to power through embracing identity politics and their own underdog victimhood than embracing real change. And I believe it’s because of that, not Sanders, that we are going to see the collapse of democracy and possibly the American union of states in my lifetime
Bernie actually encapsulates perfectly the trope of “career politician” - he’s never really worked for a living.
No. No one owes your party silence; least of all those who've had their choices foreclosed through its games.
Well said… Thank you.
I think so! I know there will be people who find my thinking on this anti-democratic. But based on the past, these things (e.g. in this case, the growing dissing of Biden among Democrats) can develop into runaway disaster unless they are confronted early. And we can’t afford another disaster like (actually, worse than) 2016.