by Noah
Your Saturday Cartoon:
The fact that there is such a thing as a "swing voter" always saddens me. I mean, come on! You are either pro-nazi of you aren't. You are either pro-democracy or you aren't. That's the way it is and that's the way it's been for a long time. There is no rational middle ground here! It's an election system for the naive anyway. No need to dwell on the obvious details there. That's for whining blowhards. Oh, and we don't live in a rational world, so there ya go anyway.
But, really, I see these interviews conducted by semi-mindless TV twits with microphones where they ask questions of "swing voters" who, even only a day before the elections, tell the TV twits that they haven't decided how they'll vote yet. The TV twits even go out of their way to give the idiots credibility and respect that they in no way deserve. WTF!!! What is there to think about at that point? What conversations are these pathetic nutballs and idiots having with themselves? Is it-
Well, that guy's a little bit nazi but not too nazi, so I'm comfortable. I'll probably vote for him.
or-
I know he's anti-abortion but that'll never happen.
or-
I know she's a white supremacist, but I want to be fair, so I'm gonna take my time to decide.
or-
Yeah, I know he's an anti-Semite who gets a lot of his political contributions in Russian rubles. I can even see one sticking out of his pocket but there's the high price of gas or a head of lettuce that has more brains than me... Gee, that must be Biden's fault.
This is the "reasoning" that gets us a county full of nazi appologists like the ones who said after WW2, "I know Hitler did some 'bad' things but he made the trains run on time" and "Well, the Jews owned all the shops!"
I could say more today but it's best to be focused and not scattershot. I've covered the tangents I could go off on before and I will again but I don't want to dull or dilute the impact of the cartoon too much. I'll just say that here in New York, I usually get to vote on the Working Families line which used to at least make an effort to at least appear to be somewhat progressive, but this time their whole damn line was identical to the Democratic Party line and neither my wife or I could bring ourselves to vote for Chuck Schumer on either line. We used to have the Green Party line on our ballot, too, but not since they went and joined forces with Putin and that Trumpy nutball QAnon general so... Suffice to say that perhaps, one day, there will be enough truly progressive voters that a new and actually progressive party will arise to meet the demand, kinda like when people told Detroit they wanted smaller, more efficient cars and Detroit said "Fuck you." We know what happened (and, didn't happen) there.
Then there's the fact that virtually no one gets on the ballot unless the powers that be and the money changers feel they can live with either result even if they'd prefer the quicker, more inhumane of two inhumane choices. It's a long game thing for them.
substance from hiwatt11. This is my take on what could have been with Bernie in 2016:
He COULD have been THAT guy, if he wanted to be. It would have been ballsy, but he did draw 10s of millions out of the doldrums in the primaries. But he had the standard donkey mandarins against him AND a true gimmick candidate (first possible distaff nominee; former first lady) AND, of course, those $uperdelegates that guaranteed that the money's candidate was going to be nom'd.
What he SHOULD have done, as you say, is run as an I or join the Greens, as they were rumored to offer. I would have been better. He would have outperformed both Nader and Perot (differe…
crapper, you can have a "charismatic leader first" as you say but I think the point is that, without enough people who will support that leader, such a party will not arise enough to amount to anything. If there had been enough committed people in Bernie's case, there would have been no need for him to "turtle" or do what the democratic party asked in a weakened effort to get what he could, and he could have run as a third party candidate or somehow miraculously changed the democrats from within which, since he was an outsider who only caucused with them, was doubly unlikely. The "demand" as Noah calls it wasn't there.
"one day, there will be enough truly progressive voters that a new and actually progressive party will arise to meet the demand"
won't happen without the party and a charismatic party leader first. Bernie was our best hope here in 2016, but he turtled and did as the democrap party asked.
This republic would have been lost 150 years ago had Abraham Lincoln not created the Republican party (irony alert!) which led to the useless feckless cowardly Whig party being flushed by voters over pretty much the single issue of slavery. No Lincoln, no republican party... no more republic by 1868.
Today? we got no Lincoln. and all the progressives seem content to vote for lying hapless worthless feckless corru…
He made the trains run on time. Hmmmmmm I think that was Benito Mussolini. Just saying.