Ya know, I've heard it for two election cycles now. That I'm a purity tester. That I don't like to compromise. That I have to have things my way or the high way. That I have to be pragmatic and work with the options available. That I can't have everything I want, and that I shouldn't just take my ball and go home when I don't get everything I want. Well, in this post, I'm going to explain that I actually do do that, I just ain't willing to settle for complete crap from a candidate who is blatantly ignoring virtually every concern I care about.
A brief history, and what I am for
I've mentioned this before when I was far more active on here, but generally speaking, I consider myself an indepentarian, although I haven't used the word until recently. I'm an ex conservative who became more liberal after some personal awakenings, but never quite adapted to liberal culture within the democratic party. I philosophically forged my own path, recognizing that the economic system is fundamentally broken and in dire need of reform. I lived through the Obama administration's mediocre reforms, and I have to say I walked away quite underwhelmed. His solutions came off like band aids on a gunshot wound, but I wanted more change. But being an ex conservative who grew up believing government was inefficient and didn't work, this actually made me flip to being left of the democrats, but not quite socialist, believing the path forward relies on three major pillars:
Universal Basic Income
Medicare for all
Free college/student debt forgiveness
I also recognized the benefits of other popular left wing reforms like higher minimum wages, more unionization, jobs programs, etc., although I kind of view these as compromise solutions that address the problems with society as I see it in less optimal ways. None of these solutions truly end poverty, and they still rely on a coercive system based on jobs, while as part of my lessons from the Obama administration would point out, my dedication to jobism and making more work is virtually nonexistent. I just see it as people pretending to work, and people pretending to be paid. The system fails on its promises and it's time to build a new system based on a new set of principles. I believe the economy needs fundamental change, but my reforms are less radical than most socialists want. I'm a social democrat, but with a left libertarian bend, hence "indepentarianism." Which brings me to 2016.
2016: The year of Bernie or Bust
In 2013-2014 I developed my above ideas and ideology and fleshed them out to what they are today, largely. By late 2014, I was looking for a progressive candidate who would take me up on my call for a "new new deal". Early rising stars channeling the idea were Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. I gravitated to Bernie while he was 1% in the polls. Talk about being an early adopter. But I knew what I wanted. I just outlined it above. And here's why I was so drawn to him.
Look, I knew 2016 was too early to discuss UBI. It is a seemingly utopian idea. I mean we give people money, but then expect them to...not work? Seems preposterous. But between my disaffection with the economy, and me doing heavy research, I became convinced this is the way. But I knew that such an idea was so NOT mainstream, that not even Bernie would go for that.
But, with Bernie I could get my other 2 priorities. he would be for medicare for all, full throatedly, and he was for free college. As the song goes, two out of three aint bad. And in place of a basic income, he supported a higher minimum wage and jobs program. I considered his ideas to be good enough. I'm going to be honest, I'm not thrilled with the idea of jobs programs. I see it as just creating drudgery and paying people. Bernie's pitch for climate change was nice, and I could see an argument for it in the short term, but long term, like say, in the next decade, my goal was to accomplish Bernie's agenda, and then maybe pick up UBI in the 2020s and 2030s. I mean, that's what happened last time. We needed FDR to shift the overton window before UBI and the war on poverty were discussed in the 60s and 70s. We need to take back the narrative from Reagan, and pass this agenda, and then when looking back, we could say "hey you know what, instead of this complicated mess, lets have a UBI". And that would be the real debate to have in society.
That said, all this talk of pragmatism, and incremental change, and voting being like public transport, that's how I saw Bernie. Bernie was never the end all of politics for me, despite me sometimes acting like it. He was just the dude who was going in the direction I was. if we accomplished his agenda, it would get us closer to a UBI and my other priorities would be dealt with.
I mean in reality the dude was the bare minimum. I mean, "you mean, we should actually pay people a living wage for working 40 hours?" I mean, "we should actually keep up our end up the social contract that we force on people?" Yeah, no crap. Pay people a living wage for working 40 hours a week. Ensuring everyone has a job so we can have guaranteed SOMETHING in society. I mean, so radical, wow. Not really. I mean, again, this is basic common sense. It's literally the whole bare minimum of the "don't be evil" sniff test. Bernie was just FDR 2.0. That's all. For better or for worse. And the democrats told us we couldn't even have that.
Which is why I got so pissed off at the Hillary camp. Hillary came along, and literally chewed that down to a third Obama term with extremely flawed fixes of Bernie's plans at best, if not a full on rejection of them, opting for status quo politics that we had already spent the past decade trying, and that weren't working. It really isn't surprising she lost in retrospect. I mean, the GOP being comic book evil at this point is the only thing that gives these jokers any sense of credibility. And considering how low that bar is, it allows the democrats to simply be slightly better, and still be the better option in a two party system. And then they DEMAND, not ask for, but DEMAND our votes.
That's what caused me to become so anti democratic party over the years. It's one thing to have a candidate asking for my vote in good faith, and me giving it. It's another to basically give me the finger and then expect me to support them regardless. I'm willing to accommodate a Bernie, someone who is, to be honest, somewhat flawed, but well meaning and moving in the right direction. But I will NOT support a Hillary Clinton. There just isn't enough common ground there, and given most arguments are based on lesser evilism and gaslighting me, I'm not interested at all.
Which brings me to who I did vote for:
Jill Stein
I ended up voting for the green party's Jill Stein. She wasn't perfect either. She supported medicare for all, and free college, but as I stated on this blog before, her plans aren't very well thought through. She wanted to forgive student debt via some form of quantitative easing, which is to say, deficit spending. I believe in paying for proposals. And I remember asking her on reddit about basic income and she said she supported it but kind of doubled back.
Even worse, she was anti science at times, pandering to the idiots who are now qanon Trumpers who need to eat organic because chemicals are bad, think vaccines are questionable, and that wifi hurts kids. Yeah. I'm brutally honest here. Stein was not a good candidate. And she was less competent than Hillary by a mile. I would've voted for Hillary if she were just a bit more accommodating. The bar wasn't high. But I was so pissed off and knew Stein wouldn't win anyway I strategically protest voted to try to push the democrats left in future elections. And believe it or not, Hillary actually lost, only to learn all the wrong lessons due to her stubbornness and intellectual dishonesty.
2020: 2016 Electric Boogaloo
I never really forgave the democrats after 2016. And politics became such a crapshow I just lost interest to some extent for a while. I had my ideas, but the Trump administration was as incompetent as I knew it would be, and the democrats literally didn't learn at all. I just tuned out because neither party really interested me at that point. Yes yes, the republicans are comic book level bad. Democrats are cynically evil russiagaters on the other hand. I just couldn't stand either.
That said, I just waited until 2020. I just saw 2016-2020 as a huge dark age we had to get through as Americans before we could get another shot at a decent candidate. I expected to back Bernie again, but the field ended up being more diverse than I expected. However, despite that diversity, most didn't impress me. Biden was the front runner and ew, he's basically just Hillary/Obama. Blatant centrist. And then other frontrunners like Harris seemed a little better, but seemed to do this weird triangulation game of "hello fellow kids" in being for Bernie ideas, without being Bernie. Like the smarter centrist democrats actually claimed to be for medicare for all and free college and stuff, but at the same time were for a different, weaker implementation of the idea, trying to hitch a ride on the Bernie train while being basically against Bernie. Which begs the question, why not just vote for Bernie? Which is why those candidates lost. Most people ultimately wanted a full on centrist, or they wanted Bernie. The other candidates were just competing for votes from these two camps. Except one, who I strongly considered supporting and did support for a time.
Andrew Yang: A new hope?
I'm going to be honest, I originally did not consider Yang a serious candidate. I saw him being discussed in basic income forums as early as 2017-2018, and he just didn't impress me. I looked at his UBI plan, and being very well informed on the inner workings of UBI from a public policy perspective, I had to say his plan was pretty much crap. I mean, a VAT tax? That just taxes consumption. Meaning you spend your UBI, and you get taxed on it. And his UBI had a massive deficit problem, which I actually attempted to fix in fleshing it out in my 2019 iteration of my UBI plan. And the dude was a no name candidate no one took seriously. I mean, why would I support him over Bernie? Even if he's for UBI, it isn't my UBI, and he doesn't seem to offer much else of value. So I expected to support Bernie.
But then in 2019, he had his famous Joe Rogan interview which kind of was is breakthrough moment. And I'm going to be honest, it profoundly affected me, and my opinion of him. This guy actually gets it. Like, he looks at the world the same way I do. The failure of creating jobs. Automation coming. The areas he talks about with massive job loss shifting toward Trump, the failures of the democrats to capitalize on the anger people feel, he gets it, he gets it, he gets it. Without going into details, it went deeper than that, and his research into this topic actually caused a very dark moment for me, given how much it spoke to me. But that's the thing. Yang. Gets it. And then I looked more into him. I read his book. I read his campaign website. And I can't help but be amazed by how well his top three priorities, basic income, medicare for all, and human centered capitalism, align with mine. Maybe the guy isn't perfect. Maybe his plans are a bit flawed. But you know what? His mistakes weren't done in bad faith. He is an amateur, much like me, and he made some rookie mistakes with his numbers. In trying to pass a bill, congress could fix that. That said, for much of 2019, I became a hardcore Yang Gang supporter, and my loyalty to Bernie wavered. Bernie is a good candidate, with a lot of good ideas, don't get me wrong, but again, I kinda hitched my wagon to him because he was the best option available at the time. He wasn't perfect, and he was a compromise. Yang seemed more in line with my actual politics.
Yang still was a compromise too though, and Yang's flaws grated on me as the year went on. To be fair, outside of his top issues and a few other interesting ideas, Yang's platform seemed flawed. I ended up seeing Bernie talk during the summer on vacation, it was a random happenstance thing. I was passing by the speaking venue on my way to get a nice non alcoholic daiquiri, and hey, why are there Bernie signs all over this park? Is he speaking here, today? Oh crap, I gotta see that. So I detoured. Didnt drink anything for four hours despite being thirsty, didn't go to the bathroom either despite having to, but hey, I got a front row seat at a Bernie rally. And what did he speak about? Climate change. This was in coastal south carolina, and we were a few blocks from the beach, and the discussion centered around how in a few decades, where we were standing might be underwater. And much like earlier in the year, it affected me, and it made me wonder if my Yang support was selfish. Yang aligned more with me than Bernie did on my top issues. But outside of those issues, Yang was a fairly moderate democrat with a Biden/Clintonesque platform. On the other hand, Bernie did address climate change, and maybe I should support a jobs program for the sake of the greater good? Climate change is an existential threat, I don't want to screw over the planet because I decided a UBI was more important than curbing climate change. That said, I shifted.
Yang shifted over the campaign too. When I supported him, he was for medicare for all full throatedly, the only other candidate from Bernie and maybe Warren to do so. But, he shifted toward a public option due to costs and pragmatism. I don't believe this shift was in bad faith, but it did damage my opinion of him. I mean, without medicare for all, the dude just had UBI. Is UBI really worth sacrificing every other priority for? Am I selling my soul for a measly $1,000 a month? Again, it weighed on me.
In December 2019, I cut ties with the Yang gang. I mean no ill will toward them. But the primary was coming up in 2020, Yang was like 2-3%, Bernie had a real shot at winning this, and I agreed with Bernie more on virtually every idea other than UBI more. Without medicare for all, and with a weaker climate program, I decided Yang was too weak to support, and Bernie would be better. Again, I would put aside UBI and my anti work post scarcity fantasies to come together for the more immediate common good. Don't ever say I don't compromise, or that I'm a purity tester, because if I was, I would have been ride or die on Yang. But, because I do compromise, I went with Bernie.
I guess it didn't matter. Yang dropped out after New Hampshire, and I didn't vote until April. By then Bernie was defeated too. The democrats played their games again and foisted Biden upon us, telling us to vote blue no matter who again. And me, not being willing to settle for crap, once again turned to the green party...
Howie Hawkins: a much better Jill Stein
Howie Hawkins was...interesting. He was a much better Jill Stein. He was allegedly the original green new dealer and had much of the expertise Jill Stein lacked. He was a founding green party member and the best green party candidate since Ralph Nader. He supported medicare for all, he supported free college, he didn't support student loan forgiveness, but that isn't a dealbreaker. He supported the green new deal, and he even supported a UBI in negative income tax form. But, that's kind of the issue with the greens. When you're in a position of not being a serious candidate with a serious chance to win, you can just throw out grand progressive wish lists that lack political pragmatism. As I said in 2019, when debating Yang vs Bernie and green new deal vs UBI, you can't really have both. We can only spend so much money, and opportunity costs exist. And push comes to shove, he would shift back to being a green new dealer. That is his "thing". He basically was closer to Bernie than Yang. But he was still a decent candidate with interesting ideas. And he was much better than Joe Biden. I gave him a vote without a second thought after Biden got the nomination. I wasn't about to vote for the democrats' gaslighting and giving us nothing campaign.
I'm always compromising
That said, I'm always compromising. Even the candidates who I find the most common ground on, I might only agree with them 80-90% of the time, and on top issues we might only agree 50-60% of the time. Even if we agree on policy, we might disagree on implementation of it. Or they might not agree with every point I agree with on. But I'm not about to purity test someone who is sufficiently close where I feel like we at least have some common ground on values and policy. You're never going to get everything you want, and as any leftist will tell you, what we hate most in the world is often other leftists. Because the left is so diverse, that it has several non overlapping political ideologies and the left has vigorous debates among themselves about how to best solve issues. I'm not even really a member of the "left" in this sense, as I'm fairly agnostic on capitalism vs socialism, and instead seek UBI and a non forced participation economy that gives people the freedom to live as they want. I'm left in the sense of being left of democrats, but not left in the sense of being outright anticapitalist. I mean I lean that way, but the furthest I can go is worker cooperatives in a market system on that front. But often times, if I'm going to fight both the republicans and democrats, I end up supporting more "socialist" types like Hawkins and Sanders over the "human centered capitalism" I'm most drawn toward. Every election is a compromise. I just make sure the compromise is worth it. With other left wingers, I'd argue it is. I can often get at least something I want, and get progress on other issues, even if it's not necessarily the exact progress I want, or how I would do things. The reason I don't compromise with democrats is because the compromise is often done in bad faith and the compromise is so one sided and watered down in their favor it feels more like they're cornering me and demanding an unconditional surrender I'm not willing to give. So I tell them to screw off.
Looking forward to 2024
I'm not sure what I will do in 2024 year. I have mixed opinions on Biden. He's a little better than I expected, but still very lacking. And given 2024 might be the year of a reelection campaign rather than an open seat with primaries, the ticket might be already decided. That's the problem of democrats winning, you're stuck with them for 8 years instead of just trying again next time. Moreover, I legitimately am afraid of the republicans right now. It's all fun and games until someone incites an insurrection. Trump could run again in 2024, or a close supporter of his. And if they win, well, I do fear for the future of democracy. I didn't take Trump super seriously for the most part. Even through most of 2020 I just kind of treated everything that happened as a necessary evil in order to purge the evil out of our system once and for all. The GOP needs to fail before voters reject them. But given Trump almost win in 2020 despite being such an evilly incompetent president, and watching his supporters try to overturn election results, yeah, I'm kind of scared that Trump might not be a one and done deal. We might have had a party realignment alright, it's just that due to Clinton's failures, and the democrats' continually unwillingness to rectify them, the GOP might end up gaining the ideological upper hand as the republicans become a fascist-populist party while the democrats double down on identity politics and centrism, in which case, dark days are ahead, and we are screwed.
One thing I will say though. COVID has changed my politics too. I mean, it's kind of proven me right all along. If we had a basic income and medicare for all, everyone would already have a constant source of "stimulus". There wouldnt be as long of an unemployment line. People could pay rent. They could refuse to work for oppressive bosses who force them to work in unsafe conditions that put their health at risk. The world would be so much better if we had these ideas, and it's like this crisis has proven me right all along. And as far as climate change goes, I suspect if we changed how we live and didn't rely so much on never ending work and production, we would probably pollute far less too.
That said I am, currently, becoming a lot more unapologetic about my actual views. We're not in the middle of a campaign season, I'm not pushing for a push in a specific direction in hopes it gets me close to where I'm really going. I'm just being me, and I'm not taking a side for pragmatic reasons. I'm just being me. Take it or leave it. Basic income, medicare for all, free college. Those are the three pillars any major economic reform should rest upon.
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