So, leftist infighting is a thing. It happens a lot, and half of this blog is me just infighting with other lefties half the time. But, come election time, I do support some level of unity among different candidates' bases. The fact is, those of us who are left of the corporate democrats are a rather small minority or plurality of the country, and of the democratic party's voter base. Maybe 1/3 of the democratic party and about 1/6 of the country overall. This makes it difficult to leverage our numbers to get things done.
But...lefties seem to like to spend more time attacking other lefties than actually getting things done. We're fans of circular firing squads in which we nitpick each other over ideological differences. I want to say, I get it. Honestly, I dont agree with anyone 100%, I keep saying it, I always compromise and people who i agree with strongly and support I typically only agree with 70-80% at best. A corporate dem I might agree with around 40-50% in my own estimation, which is much lower. But at some point, we need to basically lower our standards, just a little, and vote for the best candidate. We won't get everything we want, but we need to move things in the right direction. As long as the person is honest, and supports some major priority of yours, you should probably support them at least somewhat. I mean, Bernie didnt support UBI in 2016 but I supported him. I wanted unity between the Yang and Bernie factions in 2020, but the bernie factions decided to pull their little leftist gatekeeping crap, which actually pushed me more toward yang's original 2020 positions in the grand scheme of things, looking at ideological spring cleaning I did in years since.
But this time, we're not dealing with a democratic party race with 20+ candidates that fits whatever ideological predisposition that's under the sun, including my own weird UBI oriented ideology that like <2% of americans believe in. We got Joe Biden, and we got Marianne Williamson. I wouldnt expect bernie to jump in, I wouldnt expect warren to jump in, I wouldnt expect yang to run either. The old 2020 guys who we all know and love are out of it this election cycle. I've really wondered, with bernie gone, who do we even have left to take over his movement? I was initially positive about nina turner, but then she ended up imploding as the dems blackballed her and supported her competition. Yang would never be accepted by purity testy progressives, and while i was initially supportive of his forward party efforts, he basically screwed up where I can no longer support him in good conscience. Williamson is all we got so far. And while I can respect holding out to see who else jumps in the ring, she may be the only one who challenges Biden for a 2024 run.
Any 2024 dem primary run is likely go to nowhere. Gonna be brutally honest. Biden is the presumed nominee, and the neolibs are gonna suppress any candidate who runs against him. Even if biden were to step aside, they'd put Pete and Kamala as their preferred replacement. That said, it makes even less sense for us to infight over policy. If I can put aside UBI and vote for Williamson, who has a pretty progressive platform and supports many other priorities of mine, why cant leftists put aside whatever weird grievances and purity tests they have? I mean, it's fine to have standards and stick to them, but if you can't even get a SINGLE candidate to match those standards, what good are they? At the very least support the candidate most likely to support your priorities.
This isn't saying that any candidate is entitled to a vote. Im not arguing for party unity, blah blah blah. Im arguing for people to form a coalition against the dem establishment and to focus on beating Biden, rather than arguing over who's a better leftist and blah blah blah. Look how well that worked in the mayoral race as the Wiley camp kept attacking Yang. Adams came in and won and blew us all away.
If you have a better candidate than Williamson, present them. If not, then support her. We can't afford to be picky right now. yes yes, I know Williamson has a history of cringey woo. Yes, I know she doesn't have the political experience or policy expertise, of say, bernie. But let's face it, bernie's gonna be 83 in 2024, and you don't want someone that old running for office now. He'll be leaving in his 90s at this rate. Not good.
Anyway, that's my stance on this. The left needs a coalition of diverse interests who might not always agree ideologically, but who are close enough that we can all agree that this is a step in the right direction. The fact is, until a UBI centric candidate presents themselves, or we get a more polished alternative to Williamson, Williamson is it.
As for the general, do what you want. At this point, I probably will support Biden inevitably. This is one election where I actually will say the stakes are too high for the GOP to win. This isn't 2016 or 2020, if you guys have been noticing in my recent articles covering trump and desantis, these guys are a LITERAL threat to democracy. Trump wants to abolish the constitution, and DeSantis would screw up america in so many ways making it difficult for even the neolibs to maintain power. Seriously, that's kind of my line with supporting blue no matter who here. You want to basically destroy the country's democratic institutions and turn us into a one party dictatorship? Yeah, that's crazy. However undemocratic and crappy the democrats are, when the GOP is doing this crap, that's a more serious and immediate threat to deal with.
So I say, in the primary, support the candidate who will bring us closer to our goals, in the general, move to protect democracy from the GOP. What more can we do? We're kinda screwed as a country right now. The fact is the original sin of 2016 and the Trump-Hillary divide has brought us to this. The election could have gone in any other way and things likely would have been radically different. We're realigning on the worst lines possible, and if we're not careful, we might not have a democracy left to work within.
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