We had a glimpse of that antitrust future on the horizon with the previous admin. This spooked all the big tech weirdos so much that they put their weight behind the other guy and, well, they won. Antitrust is dead for another generation. Yay.
Well, the current cronies that run the USA may seem to have won for the time being, but sooner or later the population in the USA will realise how much fudged up the orange clown is. Only about 30% approval rating - that will continue to dwindle.
There’s a partisan floor¹ that’s in the neighborhood of 25–30% where people will vote for their party no matter what. The 2004 Illinois Senate election was a good test case where when the Republican nominee went down in self-inflicted flames and was hurriedly replaced with Alan Keyes, who had no in-state constituency and, being Black (which, no doubt was the cynical reason for his recruitment), eliminated the racist choice. He gained a mere 27% of the vote which is likely the floor for a major party candidate in a contested broad-population election (smaller-level partisan elections, whether for single congressional seats or in small states, generally have demographically skewed populations which can result in wider margins).
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1. Although as I think about it, this may only be valid on the right side of the spectrum given the data points.
We're obviously long past the days when people's politics could be mapped on a nice normal distribution, with some outliers at either end and a big group of moderates in the middle who vote differently depending on the election. Today the distribution is not only bimodal: there's almost no overlap at all.
Your politics are part of your identity now. It's part of how you define who you are, and according to the research, over 95% of people are completely entrenched and will never vote for any candidate from the "other" party. (This the highest since right before the Civil War.)
That said, while nobody's changing sides any time soon, people _do_ stay home on election day, and we're going to see that next election.
The races for the next couple decades will be won by the candidates and the parties who can drill up enough enthusiasm from their base. Preach to the choir so the choir sings, etc.
They'll immediately fall for the next such guy. Republican voters aren't actually reconsidering their views. Corporations and oligarchs have known no major blowbacks in decades and keep winning on every front, further eroding the Republic and its institutions little by little. And they won't stop until all that's left of America is an empty shell, a dead state like Russia, a sandbox for the Epstein class.
Humans have figured out an easy medicine to reduce weight, which is the number 1 causal factor in morbidity/mortality.
There are also novel cancer immunotherapy medicines that are drastically increasing quality and quantity of life for cancer patients, like keytruda and blinatumomab.
The Democrats already tried out the idea that Trumpism would blow over and everything would go back to "normal" with Biden's 2020 campaign, but it didn't really turn out that way. Right-wing reactionary politics has been overrepresented in the US since its founding due to state based representation, and I expect that this will continue to be the case for as long as the US exists in its current form.
It would help if they actually ran a candidate that leaned more moderate than extreme. They seem to choose candidates specifically to rile up the Republican base. That makes sense if this is actually a football rivalry or something but if they want to get elected they need to appeal to the middle, which doesn't seem (at least from my perspective) to happen very often.
Biden and Harris were both centrist choices. Harris specifically campaigned with never-Trump Republicans by her side. It didn't matter. Republican campaign ads and their captive media ecosystem portrayed them as radical leftists.
If only the DNC was interested in promoting candidates that work for the people and aren't just interested in lip service while mostly maintaining the status quo. Things could have been different. Imagine what 8 years of Bernie and a functioning Congress might have accomplished.
I didn't make that claim, you misread what I said. I explicitly mentioned a functioning Congress because that's a necessity, a functioning executive branch is not enough. We are in agreement.
We're in agreement, so what did I misread? :D The point is, there's not some realistic, single-point "if only" scenario where "things could have been different", because the problem is largely Congress.
No. The "imagine" is only an elaboration on the (rather more definite) "things could have been different" claim, which I already contend is a fantasy. I mean, sure, I could also "imagine" a world where America throws out its corrupt and/or stupid politicians all at once and replaces them with sensible people, but it would be of similar plausibility and utility.
It's called a hypothetical, not a fantasy, and it is a device used to ground the discussion by giving us a baseline for comparison. I don't think this is a very useful discussion if we're going to talk past each other and not assume the best possible interpretation of each other's words.
I know what a hypothetical is. An utterly unrealistic hypothetical is more distracting than grounding.
I don't think we're exactly talking past each other. I think the problem is that you've misdiagnosed the problem as, like you said in another comment, "a malfunctioning executive branch", and don't realize the full scale of Congress's culpability. I honestly thought you would know what I was talking about regarding the feasibility of a "functioning Congress", but you apparently just think that's an important but trivial detail to mention. Woops.
Almost all the major problems either stem from or could at least be mitigated by Congress doing its job. This became very clear on the micro level when I worked in the federal government, but as far as I can tell it's true at all scales. Here's a macro example: a functioning Congress would have removed Trump many times over.
> I honestly thought you would know what I was talking about regarding the feasibility of a "functioning Congress", but you apparently just think that's an important but trivial detail to mention
At no point did I assign triviality to the process of establishing a functioning Congress. In fact, I promoted it to be equal alongside a functioning executive branch.
You're arguing with a sarcastic attitude and continuing to interpret my words uncharitably. I'm interested in having this conversation and hearing your perspective as a former federal worker, but I don't want it to be hostile.
I may have a bit of a sarcastic tone, but I'm nevertheless interpreting your words as well as I can.
> If only the DNC was interested in promoting candidates that work for the people and aren't just interested in lip service while mostly maintaining the status quo. Things could have been different. Imagine what 8 years of Bernie and a functioning Congress might have accomplished.
Yes, you acknowledge that a functioning Congress is necessary for the scenario, but at least by my reading, only perfunctorily. It's thrown in with no visible connection to the rest of the scenario.
Maybe I misread this and the actual starting point for your scenario is a DNC that works for the people, and this leads to both Bernie and a functioning Congress? I still don't buy it. Such a well-intentioned party is already fantasy in my view (we could equally well imagine a well-intended GOP), and even if it existed it wouldn't fix all the problems that a single party can cause. The whole scenario falls apart. That could be why I missed this interpretation: it's less common to see, still doesn't make sense, and Bernie in particular doesn't really figure into it.
> But as you've already pointed out, it's kind of pointless if the fundamental problem is a malfunctioning executive branch (and a federal government with far too much power).
This is technically phrased as a conditional, but with subtext that accepts the premise about the "fundamental problem" (and is content-free otherwise). This makes it an implicit claim that the fundamental problem is indeed the executive.
If you don't think these statements show a lack of focus on Congress's dysfunctionality, clarify.
Again, that claim of incorrect focus was the main content of my original response to your "things could have been better":
> That "functioning Congress" requirement is doing a lot of the work in that claim, and no single election result would make that happen.
Maybe the "no single election result" thing was a misread, but why else would you mention Bernie unless you thought that was significant enough to matter? It isn't. The problem is the incentives in the overall system, and everything you've talked about is downstream of those.
Anyway, my perspective as a former federal worker is mostly a hundred papercuts that have mercifully faded into the past, but which at the time were all traceable to some act, or failure to act, of Congress. It was mind-numbing at the time, and could only be boring now even if I recalled the details.
You did misread me and you're still misreading my hypothetical situation as some kind of fantasy, when it is simply a baseline for how good things can be so that we can gauge just how far off track we are. You are ascribing intent and meaning to my words that were not present.
> If you don't think these statements show a lack of focus on Congress's dysfunctionality, clarify
Arguing about meta on the internet with a stranger is not something I find fun nor a good use of my time. I clarified my intent, so latching on to a misunderstanding that has already been corrected completely derails the conversation from the actual topic.
> This is technically phrased as a conditional
Dude, it's okay to misunderstand someone on the internet. I tried clarifying, smoothing things over and discussing the topic but you have replied with a list of technicalities and further assumptions and and even more negative attitude. This is not a healthy way to discuss anything, especially because we are no longer even discussing the thing; instead you're expecting me to continue defending myself against a barrage of further misunderstandings and assumptions.
Have a nice day, please do not respond with further bickering.
Agreed. But on the topic of antitrust specifically, Lina Khan was absolutely doing the work, and Biden 100% deserves credit for appointing her. He could've chosen some do-nothing loser like everyone before him did, but he chose Khan.
However, it's generally hard for me to give Biden much credit for anything, however, given his own and his party's general complicity with decades of genocide and apartheid in Palestine. Same for Harris.
That and oversight of many more atrocities also carried forth by his predecessors really puts a damper on any good deed and make it hard to buy into any narrative of authenticity when it comes to politics that benefit human beings.
I also generally think Bernie would have played hardball on antitrust and given what we got with Biden, I'd prefer to have seen what Bernie could have done with the time.
Terrible narrative. Lina Khan under Biden was more than willing to go after big companies. She was forced out because the American people voted Trump into office.
Eight years of Sanders would have left us with a far more gridlocked country. The man has virtually no political talent.
I love Lina Khan as much as the next guy. But as you've already pointed out, it's kind of pointless if the fundamental problem is a malfunctioning executive branch (and a federal government with far too much power). But I'm going to need receipts on your claims about eight years of Sanders.
This is what I take issue with. It's a heavy enough accusation that it needs receipts. It needs proper framing on why exactly the benchmarks you've listed are important for delineating political skill and why other benchmarks are not.
Sure, here are a few that are directly relevant to political jobs:
- legislation proposed and passed
- elections won (i.e. candidate WAR)
- ability to make backroom deals
- campaigning skills
He's not good at any of those except the last one. I've mentioned the bills, he lost two primaries (his staffers engaged in election denialism both times), only has a seat because he's in a safe Dem state, and has a reputation for being a difficult politician to work with. He is obviously out-of-touch with American voters, his policy proposals are very fluffy and barely substantial, and about the nicest thing I can about his campaigns is that they draw in an enthusiastic crowd, but not one that seems to vote for him and his candidates.
Progressives have much better politicians now: Mamdani, AOC, Al-Sayed. If all of them can deliver like Mamdani - who might genuinely have the best political skills of any American politician living now - then maybe this "what if Bernie won" stuff could actually work. But Sanders would have crashed and burned the second the GOP shut down the government, because he's not good at convincing people who disagree with him.
Can you name another serious candidate at the time who had both political skill to your liking and also was an actual honest-to-god man of the people, even if some their policies are out of touch or misguided? Virtue alone was a good enough reason to make it an obvious choice for me, I'm not even here to defend his actual political prowess.
It's pretty silly to call Biden's platform more left-leaning than Sanders'. Also, Biden in office has been a typical right-leaning (by any other country's standards) democrat. What he campaigned on means nothing.
> Considering that he actually won the primary, I would consider him to be much more of a "man of the people" than Sanders.
This is how I know you are either being disingenuous or ignorant, so your arrogance is not warranted. Sanders was snubbed and cheated by the DNC during his 2016 campaign and they did not support him seriously the second time around. At the time, he felt a Democrat victory was more important than Trump winning, saw how the DNC was treating him and backed down in order to support Biden.
> I think calling someone a man of the people requires them to have successfully accomplished things on behalf of the people. Sanders... has really not.
Sure, if we start choosing arbitrary definitions for things, you can make any point that you'd like. However, there is little use in you redefining words that I used, because then it's just a straw man. When I say "man of the people", I mean someone who has my and your best interest at heart.
That is not Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris nor the DNC nor Trump nor Vance nor the GOP. Doing some good here and there doesn't erase Biden's legacy as an extreme warhawk, as the man who wrote the Patriot act, as someone who expanded our national domestic surveillance network, as an Israeli-Palestinian genocide supporter and a host of other horrible anti-democratic things.
You're disregarding the entire point, that the status quo is not working, and literally anyone with their heart in the right place is an improvement over the majority of politicians working in the legislative and executive branches today.
Clearly you're getting emotionally upset, your little "FFS" is not needed, your patronizing attitude is not needed. If you want to have a political discussion, great. If you're just here to belittle me while displaying your own ignorance, we can cut this short here.
More unique individual people donated to his primary efforts than any other candidate in history. Wouldn't this be indicative of some large amount of political talent?
I think people grossly underestimate "money is speech" that is spent by corporate interests. PACs and SuperPACs are something I've just never understood how their donations are not just bribes
I couldn't agree more with your point. But also, precisely because I agree with you, I'm flashing back to Proton CEO Andy Yen claiming that Trump would be great on tech anti trust and an improvement on what came before, which was ridiculous from the moment he said it but symptomatic of a certain kind of tech bro mindset.
