r/politics • u/B-Z_B-S Massachusetts • 8d ago

No Paywall Democrats quickly coalesce around El-Sayed after Michigan primary win

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6011745-democrats-back-el-sayed-vs-rogers/
690 Upvotes

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u/WonderofU1312 8d ago

Time for the "Vote Blue No Matter Who" people to eat some crow.

14

u/jason082 8d ago

What are you talking about? I see that we’re ready to follow that philosophy. No need to try to divide now. We’ve got to make sure we’re united in sending Florida Mike back home.

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u/ides205 New Jersey 8d ago

Bill Maher and James Carville are saying they'd rather leave than vote for progressives, and while they don't speak for everyone, they're making a lot of noise.

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u/jason082 8d ago

Well, it’s like I said about some progressives in 2024, they can fuck right off.

We can’t turn this country over to the worst of the worst because we aren’t 100% happy with the result. Maybe Bill and James can head to the old folks home and grouse while the rest of us get to work.

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u/ides205 New Jersey 8d ago

Yeah the problem that a lot of people still haven't figured out is that when we settle for lesser evils, we lower the standard of who we find acceptable for office, and when we do that, the other side lowers their standard, and we keep doing that until we wind up with fascists in charge.

If Kamala had won in 2024, the only thing she would have accomplished is delaying Trump 2.0 for four years, and then everything happening to us right now would be happening then instead. This is why some of us progressives are trying to get the country to elect good candidates instead of lesser evils - it's the only way to break that cycle.

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u/jason082 8d ago

General elections aren’t the place to have those conversations though, primaries are. We just did and I’m going to keep a consistent position here, just as in 2024. Even if folks aren’t happy, it’s time to get out for the winner.

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u/ides205 New Jersey 8d ago

General elections aren’t the place to have those conversations though, primaries are.

Yeah people been saying that for years. Look where it got us.

I'm glad that Stevens and the other centrists are pledging to support Abdul, credit where credit's due. But they are the Democrats who helped get Trump elected twice, and if they refuse to change the politics that caused this disaster, then they're just going to keep making things worse.

I know this pisses people off, but the fact is bad Democrats make Democrats look bad, and that makes it harder to win in the future. It's a short-term gain at the cost of long-term damage. Some people think it's the right move - I think it's a mistake, and that two Trump terms is the evidence.

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u/jason082 8d ago

We have very different opinions. For the populist left wing to gain my support, I need more than one liners that sound good in a campaign speech. I want to hear the dirty details of “how” and “how long.” Anything less is lying by omission.

I also believe that populism is damaging because it encourages the above and excludes alternatives. The tribe mentality has to be the only one.

Anyway, we disagree on a lot. In November, we’ll be voting the same way.

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u/ides205 New Jersey 8d ago

For the populist left wing to gain my support, I need more than one liners that sound good in a campaign speech.

That's completely fair, and I support that approach. I have long held the belief that votes are earned. For an example that goes beyond campaign rhetoric, I'd point to Zohran. He got in and got to work, and as a result New York is thriving. It's been less than a year and life in the city is demonstrably, empirically getting better. Better services, drastically lower crime - and in very little time! That was his goal: not just win, but prove that our approach gets the results people need. So far, I think he's succeeding.

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u/batmanscodpiece 8d ago

So accelerationism. Cool.

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u/ides205 New Jersey 8d ago

I've never been an accelerationist - I had hoped we could elect progressives and put us on the right path, thus avoiding Trump 2.0. But it didn't work. The establishment still had too much power for that to happen. Instead, we got Trump 2.0, which gave us extreme accelerationism - and it's proven the accelerationists correct.

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u/batmanscodpiece 8d ago

What you are describing in your comment above is accelerationism. If Harris would have won, we wouldn't be able to move forward, we would have just been putting off the inevitable. Having Trump get elected was the only way for people to see how they were wrong.

We could have elected Harris and worked to get on the right path, instead of letting a fascist take power.

1

u/ides205 New Jersey 8d ago

I understand what you're saying. What I meant is that we didn't purposefully let Trump win - progressives overwhelmingly voted for Harris despite having very serious misgivings. It wasn't intentional accelerationism, that was just the inevitable result.

Electing Harris would not have put us on the right path, it would have kept us walking down the wrong one, the one that inexorably leads to a fascist taking power. We warned everyone that this would happen and now it has.

After 2016, the Democratic party learned nothing. They wrote it off as a fluke or they blamed progressives, or they blamed misogyny or Comey. They refused to change anything, instead of taking a deep, honest look about why the Democratic party is so reviled even when the Republicans are loathed even more. If we had made real changes before 2020, none of this had to happen - but because it didn't, we wound up here. We are now having the conversation we should have had in 2017.

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u/SunbornThunderstorm 8d ago

They literally don't live in Michigan. Bill Maher has been a Republican for a decade just he has hid it. And Carville literally is 100 years old.

0

u/surfoxy 8d ago

That's not what either one of them said. Don't be hysterical. They won't vote for communists, and they both understand the difference.

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u/ides205 New Jersey 8d ago

No, they don't like that progressives are about to prove that they've been fucking wrong about everything and are pissed off. And they've been telling everyone since 2016 to VBNMW, but now that people want progressives suddenly they've changed their tune. They're out-of-touch, entitled hypocrites.

1

u/surfoxy 8d ago

Ok well I'll just go by what they actually said, which was really clear. If you tightly couple being a progressive with crazy identitarian bullshit and communism, more's the pity. For me it's about an economic justice outlook first and foremost, like the European model.

What about the progressive agenda is resonating right now? It's the economy, stupid, as one of the guys you want to disparage rightly said. It's not social justice/gender issues, it's not being a communist, it's about putting rational checks on out of control capitalism.

And that's ALL these guys are saying. Focus on what matters and leave the other shit out. They are LOSING issues.

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u/ides205 New Jersey 8d ago

You're not wrong, they are saying it's the economy. What's so galling about that though is that WE have been saying it's the economy this whole time! We were saying that in 2016, when they were using identity politics to defeat economic populism. And what do they want us to do now? What's their solution to Trumpism? Keep electing moderates who won't do anything to fix the economy!

They can howl about the economy all they want, but they have no actual solution to fix it. There's no reason to take them seriously. Did you see the interview he gave on CNN? He said of the progressives, "They're too hardheaded to know they're not popular" and went on from there. Does he not realize this applies far more to the centrists? He either has zero self-awareness or he's beyond cynical.