So, I figured that I would walk you guys through the past three election cycles as far as how democratic party propaganda works. because it is quite clear that we are propagandized to, and with Jon Stewart really coming out swinging, and receiving a metric ton of backlash, I want to explain how exactly democrats try to manufacture consent. As we know, democrats have cozy relationships with the media and basically trade access in the form of interviews, access to the white house briefing room, etc., for positive coverage. So the media basically kow tows to democrats, and the democrats expect them to provide positive coverage.
It's not just democrats either. Just as networks like CNN, MSNBC, etc. are propaganda arms of democrats, Fox, etc., are propaganda arms of republicans. And it's kind of rare these days to have people on traditional media be critical of the party that they generally represent. Cenk Uygur has talked regularly about his time at MSNBC and how they told him that he couldnt step out of line because they were insiders. They were there to be cheerleaders of the establishment, not to be critical of them.
But I'm not here to discuss the propaganda model. I'm here to discuss how they actually frame the argument, and help decode the media's motives in how they cover everything, and what the sub text is behind what they have seen.
2016
My first real experience with kind of realizing how this worked was on December 24, 2014. I was eating breakfast and talking to my mom. I had already decided I was likely going to support Sanders if he ran, with Warren being my second pick, and Hillary being a very distant third. I was looking forward to the first discussions of 2016 and was ready to go for my guy.
But on December 24, 2014, I was watching CNN, and they had some guest one, and they were talking about Hillary. And they were all gushing over her, you know how neolibs do. Oh, she's so great, she's so experienced, blah blah blah. You know how it goes. But then the guest mentioned that someone to her left might jump in the race and challenge her. Suddenly the host's tone changes and they mention they have to cut to commercial. Then they pan to talking about NORAD tracking Santa Claus like they always do on Christmas eve and just sayed stuck on that for a good 30 seconds.
It seemed quite clear what the goal if this was. They did NOT want to discuss the prospect of a more left wing candidate challenging Hillary. They wanted to cheerlead for Hillary. Once a guest got off script and into a no no topic, suddenly the interview was over and they wanted to talk about something else. ANYTHING else. But what they did NOT want to do is to discuss the prospect of an actual healthy challenge to Hillary Clinton.
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Political parties are interested in one thing come election time. Winning. They are there to sell their candidate and their vision for the country, and they will do just about anything to do so. But what happens when you have to sell a turd? Well, the arguments get more fake, inorganic, and propagandistic. They might lead to more deflections, they might play dirty. It's a lot like that political science movie 'thank you for smoking", about the lobbyist defending cigarette companies. And we've had a lot of this throughout history. Lobbyists denying cigarettes cause cancer. Oil companies denying climate change exists. Often times the arguments are bad faith, but just like in the clip above, maybe the arguments aren't convincing to the person that they're being used on. But that's not the point, the point is they're there to convince a wider audience to their perspective. And if they need to use bad faith arguments, or dishonest arguments, or misleading arguments to make their point, they will. Because at the end of the day, these guys don't even, in theory, care about the truth. They care about their narrative. They care about winning.
In 2016, they went into the race deciding hillary was their gal. I actually kind of suspect that a back room deal was struck in 2008, Hillary backs out and campaigns for Obama without further challenge (given how ugly and bitter that primary was), and in 2016, the DNC puts their resources into backing her campaign. I can't prove that a deal exists, but it seems obvious from how the democrats were acting that there was SOME agreement or deal. They went into that election cycle planning to prop up Hillary, and what I will outline in this post will make that point obvious.
But, Hillary is not the best candidate for many people, especially progressive lefties. So they kind of ended up reverting to some really bad talking points to try to convince us to support her, and limit our ability to push back against them.
Early on, it seemed like the strategy was just to ignore that people like Sanders existed. I remember they did actually cover Sanders when he announced his run for president. I remember watching the announcement, but I also dont recall a ton about it since I was at the hospital with my dad who was having a minor operation done (he's fine, by the way).
On the internet, there was the most support for sanders. I mean, the internet, from 2012 on, had organically become predisposed to more progressive ideologies. We were young, we were tech savvy, the internet up to that point was like a second printing press allowing us to gain new knowledge most older generations never had access to. But these MFers were about to drop a tower of babel on us.
It started subtle at first. People would say "well you know sanders is great and all, but he ain't gonna win. He isn't electable, he's too far left."
The goal of this line was to say "yeah okay you have your views about sanders, but let's face it, the country wants hillary", like downplaying sanders' ability. I said, well, let's let the process play out, but I'm backing Sanders. And I'm not even sure about the electability. I mean, we had JUST come off from 2014. I watched the democrats get DECIMATED everywhere but in my home state of PA, we were fired up because we wanted to get rid of our horribly incompetent tea party governor. If anything, I felt like PA offered a blueprint of how to do 2016. Attack the GOP for being do nothings, and campaign on all of the awesome stuff you wanna do. like here the medicaid expansion was popular and the GOP resisted implementing it because they obviously didn't want to. I really had the idea that the dems were floundering because obama was sitting there looking pretty going on about how "he's a president not a king" and how he cant do anything and blah blah blah. NO. POUND THAT BULLY PULPIT. MAKE YOUR CASE. If anything, I felt like people were just sick and tired of politics as usual and all of the civility. Throw a punch already. So I really wasnt convinced of clinton's electability. I thought sanders was more electable. And polling indicated that.
But keep in mind, the goal of the electability argument isnt about electability. The argument wasn't based in data. If anything it went against it. The goal was based more on "conventional logic". ya know, kinda like the idea that if we had a UBI no one would work. it's an intuitive based argument that sounds good that has little to no data, and when data is presented they'll say it doesnt count for reasons. here, they'll say that "well come closer to election time voters will change their minds and when republicans start attacking him as a communist its over." I'm not sure about that. At the time at least, i suspected it didnt have the punch it used to. If anything when people talked about socialism in the context of sanders at the time, it was more "socialism is when the government" does things. Social democracy is "socialism" in this sense. And social democracy isnt the evil dreaded communism.
But yeah, they would push this, and push this. And push this. And when the primary came up, they started going on like "well, whoever wins the primary, you have to vote blue no matter who". This NEVER sat well with me. I went into this election cycle planning to vote blue. I mean, I'm an ex republican. And I was done with the GOP. I rejected their ideology and shifted hard left to what my views are now. But that said, I'm an independent leftie. Just as I left the GOP, I wasn't gonna take crap off of the dems, and I could sense tension here. I shot back something like who the F are you to tell me who to vote for? And they went all in with the whole 'well the republican candidate is always gonna be worse than the democratic one, you have to support the democrat to avoid the republican". Note how the candidate wasnt named. We werent even to trump yet. And I reacted pretty badly to this one. Because, again, democracy belongs to the voters. And as an independent minded voter, I DID NOT like being told who to vote for. Even if I WOULD have supported hillary, TELLING me to in this sense is just gonna piss me off and make me LESS likely to do so.
We would also see the two arguments combined. Like "we all have to support the democratic nominee no matter who it is, but it's gonna be hillary." Like I could see where they were going with that. Basically they were trying to push hillary on us, it was clear as day. And once again, I doubled down. YOU dont tell me how to vote, I'll vote for whomever I darned well feel like.
Really, it seemed blunt that these people were trying to pressure me into supporting hillary even if i didnt want her, and I just found that an affront to my entire view of democracy. But again, when you're trying to sell a turd, this is the kind of stuff that they have to work with. They clearly knew I wasnt gonna be happy with the choice, and they didnt care. They wanted my cooperation whether I was happy or not. Maybe under different circumstances I wouldve supported hillary. I mean, I didnt start out inherently hostile to clinton, I just didn't like being treated in that way, my actual concerns and interested ignored and telling me i HAD to support someone i didnt like. No. Votes have to be EARNED. So this clearly didnt work on me.
But this stuff spread like WILDFIRE and it went viral. And I started encountering it more and more, and people believed it more and more. I could sense tension forming between clinton and sanders type people. Clinton's arguments we're landing. They also seemed horribly propagandistic. We would see weird stuff like "she's the most qualified person ever to run" (sanders people didnt care about her resume), and stuff like that. Or "she put in her years to the party and deserves the position" (so nepotism is okay then? Also, nice mask off).
We also started seeing the "but the court!" argument in early 2015. The thing about these talking points is that I would see them once, and then suddenly...they were everywhere. It was like these MFers WERE reading off of a script. The first one I saw was on allen clifton's "forward progressive" blog. He was some dude I followed after 2012, but given his hostility to sanders supporters, I started hating his content more and more. On the court, he would start this article laying out the ages of various SCOTUS justices and arguing the next candidate could pick up to 4 justices and how if the republicans got their hold on it they would be screwed. Now, again, I'm a "new new deal" guy. The court wasnt a high priority for me at the time. And as far as I was concerned, we could see 4, we could also see 0. Or 1 after scalia died. Point is, it wasnt certain. I know, I know, in the end they were kinda proven right to some extent, but let's dissect this. This WAS an attempt by democrats to scare people into supporting them. They were explicitly bypassing the concerns sanders people had in order to promote their own narratives and agendas. And that's what I didn't like.
On that front, we started seeing arguments on that front too. We started seeing talking points like about how clinton was "pragmatic" and how sanders supporters wanted ponies and unicorns and crap. The point of these arguments was to denigrate the concerns of sanders supporters. Like we were asking too much and we needed more "pragmatic" and "incremental" change. THis was just buzzwords to back up hillary's milquetoast policies. Remember how I said recently that biden's policies apparently helped my community but i cant tell you the first way how because i dont see it and it doesnt affect me? yeah, that's clinton's policies. but for these guys, it's not about actual benefits. it's about saying they did something so they can get a notch on their belt and make an argument for reelection. It doesnt mean it will land. In this case it didnt land. They just want to list off accomplishments like they're resume achievements. because they're applying for a job after all. But they dont seem to forget their prospective employers (us) arent interested in this nonsense. you might be able to dazzle professional class people with this kind of empty nonsense, but normal people can see through it.
The point of these arguments though was primarily to denigrate the kinds of grand policies sanders wanted. They would also say things like that the numbers didn't add up (yeah, they do, I covered them on this blog previously). And push stuff like "bill clinton said in 1996 the era of big government is over, so how much will your ideas increase the size of government?" Again, all of these were attempted to sabotage sanders. They could have had an honest discussion about his policies without the dishonest framing, but the point wasnt to do that, it was to kneecap him so they could promote hillary instead as the more "pragmatic" and "incremental" candidate.
At one point, clinton even made some weirdo patriotic argument like 'we're not denmark this is the united state of america!" I guess being american means we can't have nice things. All she did was make me feel a bit less patriotic (and i really was going through an era of being anti patriotism). Again, the target wasn't me, it was the public at large, many of which are still in "the cave" so to speak. They didnt know who sanders was, what to think of him, and the goal of all of this was to suppress his ability to gain support.
As things continued to heat up, we started seeing a different kind of tactic employed too, and this was identity politics. The democrats decided to recycle the 2008 "obama boys" line as the "bernie bros", pointing out that most sanders supporters were college aged white males who were very educated, but that isnt most of the democratic party. I dont deny I fit the stereotypical bernie bro, although I was a bit older than college aged either then. Still, I was a "young american" (under 30) who was disaffected with the economy, and very educated and wanted change.
And this is where they started getting dirty. They started accusing us of sexism. Claiming we didnt like her because she was a woman. Trying to put us against the angsty feminists who think that clinton is like the most inspirational female role model ever (*retches*). And thus, gamer gate, the viral internet phenomenon I did my best to avoid like the plague, came to 2016. And much like gamer gate itself, as I see it, while my side might have had some negative elements, it was mostly the SJWs picking a fight with US. I wanna make that clear. I didn't want to fight the SJWs. Early on, I wanted to work with them toward mutually beneficial goals. but it didnt matter. Hillary decided to lean into those demographics and picked a fight with us. So now we had to deal with this rank character assassination.
This tactic isn't new. Gloria Steinem, one of the big feminist activists backing Hillary, was a known CIA spook who back in the day used to weaponize feminism in such a way to distract from talking points that focused on class consciousness. And its quite clear that that kind of bad faith tactic was employed here. ideally, intersectional stuff would work with the left on economic issues, but Steinem (and Hillary's) brand of feminism was intended to divide the working class. Again, this is tower of babel stuff. You got people working together building a tower so god confuses them by creating rifts between them that cause infighting, and it was used to great effect here.
Thus, feminism as practiced by the clinton people was used as a cudgel against the bernie people, with us being portrayed unfairly, and dirtily, as being sexist POSes.
And they did the same thing with race. The democrats weaponized their relationships with black organizers to push older POC who were amenable to clinton to the polls and would harp on and on about the black vote, telling us "you see you white progressives, you just don't understand black people" and crap like that. Again, was this division necessary? For us, no. For them, yes. Because by weaponizing this stuff, it created a second front on their operation tower of babel strategy.
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This stuff went on and on throughout 2015 and 2016. And over time I got more and more fed up with it. You can see how I acted back in 2016 on this blog. Go back and read my old posts. But yes, all of these tactics were basically used to fight a dirty campaign against sanders supporters. They started out ignoring sanders, and online, basically just pushing the idea that clinton was inevitable and that sanders was never gonna get anywhere. They then told us we had to support whoever won, but it was gonna be clinton. This didn't go well with me.This led to escalating "blue no matter who" arguments (blue no matter who was a propagandistic phrase that arose in 2015), including the "but the court" argument.
As the race heated up, they shifted to sanders policies, arguing that they were unfeasible, while clinton was pragmatic and incremental. These were all buzzwords intended to prop up crappy policies whiole bashing sanders' good policies as unfeasible and unamerican.
Things got worse. They started using identity politics, both feminism and race based identity politics, to bash clinton supporters as "too white" and "too male" while writing off as sexist and even racist. The point was to weaponize identity groups against us, ensuring that only white males like myself supported him.
it seems quite clear why i remained die hard sanders. I wanted real change, and all of these talking points never resonated with me. but the goal wasnt' to win me over. it was to win everyone else. They didnt care about me, and I knew it. And that just disaffected me from the party to the point i thought, you know what, maybe i WILL vote green. And I weighed the pros and cons right here on this blog. Ultimately I did, most people fell in line. Ultimately, they were able to keep most people "voting blue no matter who. Which is where I continue this.
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So, we had the democratic convention. And as I pointed out, it was a crapfest of identity politics. It was all feminists and black activists and for a white male progressive like me, there was nothing.And I was so fed up over this I vowed to never support clinton. She had to be punished for this. Again, her tactics were HORRID to me. Not only did she not win me over, she alienated me hard. I mean, you spend 2 years punching me in the face and pissing on my dreams and then tell me i HAVE to support you, and you tend to do that.
As I said, after the convention, the blue no matter who stuff ramped up. This is the point where the end game started. The democrats basically decided to dial up their propaganda efforts to a 10 to push me to vote blue no matter who. On reddit, it was like a switch flipped. Sanders supporters who were holdouts seemed unwelcome everywhere. We were mass downvoted, banned from subs, and the propaganda levels were unreal. I ended up retreating to a handful of smaller subs and mostly posted there, wanting to avoid the big ones where this mass astroturfing was going on.
late game, there were two major strategies I started noticing. Some of it had a mccarthyist bend to it. As leaks came out about the democratic party (guccifer, clinton/podesta emails), they painted a damning picture of the democrats coordinating behind the scenes to stiff sanders supporters. now, to me, this didnt really change my mind on anything, all it did was confirm what I knew since early 2015. That there was coordination between the media and the political parties to push clinton over sanders.
Of course, the second it came out, it was screamed that it was RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA AND OMFG DONT LISTEN TO IT THATS WHAT THE RUSSIANS WANT. And to be fair, in retrospect, yeah, the russians leaked it. I even owned up to that when it became clear. But my point is, does it mean that the point is less valid? No. Because the dems WERE screwing sanders supporters and I knew it, for all of the reasons I posted above. The dems wanted people to not listen to it, that was their goal. Push a cold war esque fear of russia.
And to be fair, since im analyzing narrative setting, yeah the russians probably did was trump over clinton as trump was a moron who would be weaker on russia while clinton wouldve been a bit more hawkish on them. Not gonna deny that. But at the same time, i'm not gonna listen to "you should trust our propaganda over theirs." How about no propaganda and I make up my mind based on facts? Im clearly nuanced and have enough things to say about both sides here.
But again, for the public, it was OMG DONT LISTEN TO THIS, RUSSIANS. So it only had a limited impact at best.
The other major general election strategy was to just go ALL OUT with the blue no matter who stuff. Attack Trump as so dangerous and a threat to democracy (even back then). Tell us trump was gonna be horrible and blah blah blah.
Now, for me, there wasnt enough evidence to suggest trump was AS dangerous as he is known to be now. This was PURE talking points from them. The fact that they happened to be right is just a matter of luck to some extent. Remember 2015. They pushed this stuff primarily to bash trump. To make him look bad. It was clinton's whole strategy. Those leaked emails indicated as such that this was what she was leaning into. They actually elevated crazies like trump so they COULD employ these arguments. It wasnt that they liked trump, but for the democrats, the crazier the better, as people would vote for clinton as an alternative. Notice how clinton barely had any good arguments for herself? It was all the opponent is so bad. And if it wasnt trump, they wouldve tried it on someone else. but they wanted trump so that it would maximize its effectiveness. Clinton thought that being relatively sane would save her campaign. it didn't. It backfired.
But yeah. That was clinton's entire pitch. Look at this nutcase, vote for me, the sane person instead. No positive pitch, just "you better vote for me or you get this nutjob." Her entire pitch was to create a moral dilemma in the voter forcing them to choose between half a bowl of crap vs a full bowl as nina turner would say, and putting the moral responsibility of the choice on the voters. It was clinton who put this gun to the country's head in the first place. The media is just as guilty of elevating trump, and clinton wanted it. And the people took the bait there too. But yeah. Then she was supposed to be the hero who came along and won the day from the bad man, because you, america, made the right decision. It didn't quite work out that way, did it?
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So, let's discuss the successes of this strategy, and its failures. From within the democratic party, this strategy was effective. Clinton managed to condition the democratic party to not expect much from the candidate, pushing the party faithful into a constant state of fear where they are unable to push for nice things that we should have. Rather, they learned to just "vote blue no matter who" and accept the lesser evil. Criticism within the party became verboten, and the party realigned away from the left and toward the center, welcoming conservatives and moderates fleeing from the insanity that became the GOP.
Only a small minority of leftists held out. And many of them just retreated to their enclaves of the internet like I did. These people were so deterred by the democratic party that they ended up polarizing away from it. Many of them became more extreme leftists in the years after, seeing the democratic party as hostile to their itnerests and losing faith in democracy in general. While i was very much as pissed off and outraged as them, I have ultimately diverged in my own direction. My refusal to go along with the democrats was a recognition of what they were doing and wishing to preserve my own vision. But the left became something darker and more insane, and the chickens are coming home to roost there as leftists have graduated to full communists.
In the country at large, I feel like the country polarized away from the democrats in 2016. Clinton's strategy was soundly rejected, and Trump won. It was close enough there were many factors that could be said to lead to clinton's loss. James Comey, Buttery Males (but her emails), or simply being a turd. My aregument is that clinton wouldve won had she not alienated that sliver of sanders supporters who refused to back her, as well as independent voters who ended up going trump. Beating trump wasnt difficult, he was able to build a coalition based on the disaffection of the american people, reversing the GOP dying and putting dems on a trajectory where THEY are now the ones at risk of electoral annhilation. Honestly, had clinton not been such a turd, i think 2016 was very winnable for the dems. Trump wasnt popular himself. Ultimately, the race came down to who generated the least hate. One of them had to win. And it happened to be trump.
Trump polarized the GOP. And the GOP LIKED him. He kinda saved the party, at least temporarily IMO. The long term legacy is very much to be debated, much like the democrats. of course, Im not here to discuss this from the GOP perspective. Im here to discuss it from the democratic perspective.
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The spin machine didnt stop just because the democrats lost. The democrats had to explain their failure. Rather than learn their lessons (as that would be too easy), they instead went full into denial mode. They would frame it as "but hillary won the popular vote", to dismiss criticisms clinton wasnt popular. Keep in mind, they dont wanna admit they have a problem, so they leaned into this instead. "But clinton was popular, we actually won, even though we lost." Just full on head in the sand stuff. But again, anything to save face.
They also went to work talking about russian interference. They did this both to go after trump, but also the left. With trump, the argument was russian troll farms and the email hacks cost her the election. In reality, while this might have played a role, to hyper focus on it seems, once again, to avoid taking responsibility for their own failures. but they arent going to admit they were wrong. Their goal is to make everyone else think they were wrong for failing them.
Keep in mind this was used against the left too. Jill Stein was accused of being a russian puppet who "dined with putin" because she attended some RT dinner putin attended. I dont deny RT leans into progressive anti democratic party rhetoric to sow chaos. I just dont think that we should stop being critical of the dems just because the russians want us to be. But yeah, the dems are trying to do some mccarthyist stuff to bully people into supporting them over "the russians", with anyone who criticizes them being diminished to a "russian bot."
In this environment, I largely tuned out much of trump's term politically. I knew trump sucked, I expected him to suck. And he was as much of a disaster as i suspected he would be. But the dems just full on went into damage control mode to deny their failures as much as possible. The party cant fail, they can only be failed. in their mind, it was YOU the voter, who failed them, if you didnt support them.
And they leaned hard into this. They did blame things on stein supporters, who to some extent, i wanted them to do so they could address the real issue of them not appealing to their voters, but again, they arent going to be honest, they're gonna play chicken with voters and say "no, it was YOUR fault, you didnt do the "mature" thing or the "right" thing by supporting us, you failed democracy". And stuff like "you only have two choices, a vote for stein is a vote for trump." Again, they're conditioning voters tho just mindlessly vote for them, not to support them because they're GOOD, but because they're the alternative to something bad. They want to shut down dissent. They literally just romanticize republicans as having voters who always fall in line (republicans had their own wars with their voters, the establishment lost, see "whats the matter with kansas" for that one, its really hilarious they pull this since before trump, republicans romanticized american democracy and institutions and didnt take ANY crap off of ANYONE. They ran out people who tried doing what the dems were doing and called them "RINOs" (republicans in name only). And now look at them. The inmates run the asylum. THey're the equivalent of what the GOP would be if they just handed the keys to the furthest left voters.But I digress.
Basically, the dems ended up winning vs their voters, and creating an environment hostile to internal criticism. They went to war with their voters, and won. Now the democratic party is a party where we cant have any reasonable criticism of the democratic candidate, or you're backing trump. This is how we got there. The democrats engineered this over the 2016 cycle, and doubled down after the election, refusing to accept their own failures and projecting them on the voters.
And this is what I wanted to discuss with Jon Stewart. The democrats have been in this echo chamber for 8 years now, since right after Stewart left the daily show, and now that he's back and he dares lob bombs at him, they cant take it and they lose their crap and claim he's helping trump get relected with both sides crap. This is how politics used to be in this country until 2016. And that's why I hated the democrats so much over the past decade so much. Because they literally brainwashed their voters to accept less and not ask questions, to the point of unquestioningly propping up an 81 year old we're not sure can remember what he had for breakfast this morning.
2020
2020 wasn't much different than 2016.
One thing I noticed early on is that they didn't seem to have a specific candidate. They were primarily interested in beating Sanders. Biden was the frontrunner, but he didnt have much popularity, and people weren't sure he could win it.
It seemed like the democrats were trying a bunch of different things to see what stuck. I think they actually wanted Harris. Why? Because she could repeat the obama strategy in their eyes. She was POC and a woman so they could do the identity angle. She was kinda progressive but also kinda centrist. And she would appease everyone in theory, but in practice, she was so fake that despite regular media appearances she never caught on.
You had Pete Buttigieg, the white male millennial mayor from Indiana who had an added benefit of being gay. Again, anything to get brownie points from the idpol people. They had a ton of different candidate Kirsten Gillabrand, Amy Klobuchar, etc.
And a lot of what they did early on was try to get bernie supporters away from sanders, claiming they supported medicare for all. Their whole idea was "well if these guys support the same things sanders did, why vote for sanders?" Of course, it was a bait and switch, and among die hard sanders supporters, this did not work. but the goal was just to erode his numbers.
Still, the open nature of the race led to a situation with over 20 candidates. And of course, they tried the same negative tricks toward sanders. They also stuck the knife in on Yang a few times too. Cut his mic during the one debate not letting him interject. Would have shark tank guy bashing "free money" and going on about work ethic right after yang did a town hall, etc. Yang himself (or maybe his campaign manager) in one of the books I read pointed out that the media seemed to explicitly be told to ignore yang. And ignore they did. They tried to avoid mentioning him and taking him seriously at all costs. Yang pioneered a strategy of shifting to the internet instead to get voters. It didnt really succeed, but I still respect him for it. Love the dude, despite his flaws, but yeah. The media did him dirty.
Still, the real threat was sanders. And they seemed to go in wanting to beat sanders. BUT...they had so many candidates they oversaturated the field. And bernie started winning with 35% of the vote in early states due to the centrist vote being split. This caused the centrists to panick with chris matthews going on deranged rants about how "it's over" and how the nazis have taken over paris and something about brownshirts. it was deranged, but yeah, they were clearly losing their crap. Something had to be done. Then Biden won overwhelmingly in South carolina, and the establishment decide "that's our guy". There was some sort of back room meeting in which everyone backed out and supported Biden outside of warren and a couple others. I think a deal was struck for cabinet positions and the like. But yeah, everyone backed out and backed Biden.
The official explanation was that he would win because he clearly won the black vote. And how we needed the black vote. no one would question this, unless youre racist. Funny how that works, isn't it? I swear, thats why they play up the black stuff. Primarily so they can go the racism route against any push back. Why else would a bunch of old boomer south carolinans have any major influence on the next election? This isnt a swing state. but the argument is that jim clyburn saved the say and the black vote wants joe biden. And because the black vote is the most important vote, apparently, we need joe biden.
Dont think about it too hard. It's cleae what this is. It's a pretext to push biden by virtue signalling identity politics and laying a trap to accuse anyone who pushes back of racism.
Sanders stayed in the race, but he got his butt kicked. And warren stabbed him in the back. She started playing up the sexism angle about how bernie didnt think a woman couldve won. bernie's comments, if he said that, were probably an acknowledgement of america being sexist, and him basically trying to acknowledge sexism if anything, but she basically accused him of sexism. Which alienated me from Warren, and why the left calls her a snake to this day.
Bernie was gonna stay in the race like 2020, but COVID happened and the dems weaponized it, claiming it would be irresponsible if we continued the primary and people would die if they went to the polls. not wanting to be that guy who gets people killed for voting for him, he gracefully backed out.
From there, it was the same blue no matter who stuff that the dems were conditioned into, as well as the existential threat of trump. And it worked this time, because unlike 2016 where more people hated hillary, this time more people hated trump. Again, when you got elections like this, it's not a matter of who people LIKE more, but who they HATE more, and people tend to hate the guy in office. Something the dems should think about in 2024.
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Ultimately, Biden won. Because unlike 2016, Trump had a record to run against and not everyone liked it. It was a highly contentious election with high turnout on both sides. MAGA actually had a lot of support. Trump's coalition is alive and well, and wasn't a one off threat. But Biden was able to get just enough people to support him. And of course the dems did their little victory lap claiming this is a win for centrism and blah blah blah (they always lean into electability when they win, but when they lose its because the voters failed them).
But then Trump wouldnt accept the election, and threw a temper tantrum. And January 6th happened. And it kinda confirmed the worst that the dems were saying about Trump. Up to this point, it was mostly a talking point for me, but here it became real. The crap hit the fan. And as we learned afterwards, yeah, he incited this crapstorm. The democrats held congressional hearings, got their ducks in a row an offered hours of convincing testimony that convinced me that yeah, Trump did do it. it was very...legal. Like if i were on a jury of a criminal case, I would convict. Of course, they did this to drive up support for their base. But hey, they might be playing me, but they're right once in a while.
However, it seemed like the democrats very quickly found themselves dead in the water after Biden was reelected. he did some mildly good things, but then he got hamstrung by his own party passing legislation, and the supreme court hamstrung him even more, and he's been relatively ineffective.
THe reason I support him somewhat is because I believe the dude tried. I mean, if a guy tries to do something, but then doesn't, should i blame him and not vote for him? NO! This is what i wanted from the get go, ACTION. I didn't vote for clinton because clinton was like "screw you you cant have nice things'. But regardless of what happened in 2020, the dems learned enough that they do have to try with sanders voters. And after following his administration and weighing his accomplishments and attempts, I've decided he has done enough to earn a 2024 vote. he still isnt my ideal candidate, but hey im not gonna punish him for trying.
Speaking of which, 2024.
2024
Biden is entering 2024 in a weak position. Because much like 2016, he's losing mainstream america, as people defect both to trump and the left. He's losing support all over, and the dems are still up to their old tricks. Despite the bad numbers, they dont want a real primary. They decided to shift to South Carolina being the first primary. They claimed this was because "diversity" and blah blah blah, new hampshire and iowa arent representative of america, but a student of history who has read this far should know his real motivations. Those old black boomers who backed him from 4 years ago. They get them, they can virtue signal about how black people like Biden and push this as a cheap narrative to accuse anyone who wants anything different of racism.
We had 2 other candidates running. Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips. Both ahve talked about unfair democratic party treatment. I know Williamson talked about paying for NGP VAN data only to be denied it because the party wouldnt give it to her. She got zero coverage and when she was brought up they called her a kooky crystal lady. They talked about how she pushed psuedoscience in the 90s to aids patients. In practice, she apparently just gave spiritual aid to people with an incurable fatal disease at the time. But again, the point of these criticisms isnt to be fair. it's to attack the candidate so they arent taken seriously. And Williamson is, to these people, "not serious."
They did this to some extent against Stein in 2016. Her anti vax positions were regularly brought up as if that's the only thing that mattered. i admit stein appealed to the "wifi is giving my kids cancer" crowd, and yeah, it's cringe, but eh, there's more to a candidate than that, ya know?
Marianne, despite her cringey image as a crystal lady or "orb mommy" actually put herself together pretty seriously. I was impressed by her platform somewhat, and she really did take up the bernie mantle when no one else would.
Bernie, ended up being captured by the establishment. In order to make the progressive policies i just credited biden with reality, bernie kinda sold his soul and refused to speak out. Once they get their hooks into you, you can't say anything against him lest you be criticized of not being a team player, and then the dems do nothing. Biden did embrace small parts of bernie's agenda, but it also took bernie off the field so we needed to start again with a new candidate to get the ball of progress rolling again. And that meant starting from scratch.
This is one of the reasons why i dont get directly involved in politics. Im not the tea player type. Im the crusty "prophet" type. I wanna say how things should be without being compromised. Outsiders who get concessions end up selling their souls for them and then are rendered inert. It's why bernie and AOC dont speak out, and why they back Biden. If they didn,t they would be isolated and ousted and not taken seriously.
Speaking of which, Dean Phillips is getting that treatment somewhat. he decided to run against Biden too. And most people dont know who he is. he did okay in New Hampshire that decided to have their primary without biden on the ballot, but still he didnt win. But he did make a name for himself there. But yeah, he's not being taken seriously, the media avoids talking about him, and acts like a primary isnt going on, and refuses to host debates. And the narrative to dean is telling. Apparently they're scolding him like a boss would in a normal crap job if you refuse to do what they say. They're calling him "not a team player" and being like "I thought you were better than this" and other passive aggressive corporate speak that is basically intended to shame him.
Ironically, this burning of the bridges is causing him to quickly become more progressive. he seemed to seek out yang's support and nominally endorsed UBI, but only in trial form, not a full policy. He also embraced medicare for all outright, although its unclear in practice what healthcare policy he would be for. But yeah. he went from being a centrist craplib to mildly progressive in like 2 months. And all it took was a bit of learning what it's like to be on the DNC's craplist.
Now...Biden. The democrats clearly dont wanna have a real primary. And they dont wanan rock the boat. They kinda realize they cant get rid of Biden. Biden wants to run again, and they have to support him. Conventional logic, and this is backed up by the limited data we have access to, does show us hes the best guy to beat trump that is polled. but the knowledge on that is based on 2020 polling and 2024 polling with only kamala harris being treated as an alternative. We dont actually have polling on dean phillips as no one is taking him seriously enough to poll him.
So we dont know. 2020 logic doesnt necessarily translate to 2024. in 2016 the data said bernie was the best guy but the dems still pushed the electability argument for hillary. In 2020 you could actually make a case for biden somewhat. I still think bernie wouldve pulled it off, but yeah, it wasnt 2016 any more. And likewise, 2024 isnt 2020. All I know is biden's numbers are abysmal. Weve discussed this at length. I might do another election prediction in another week or so.
Anyway. We dont know, and the dems are still propping up this guy. And going full blue no matter who. And pushing narratives like "most progressive president ever", which is just a flat out falsehood (although he is the best since johnson, not that that means much). Gish galloping large lists of accomplishments with no context with most accomplishments mediocre, etc.
And of course when age comes up, the response is DO WE REALLY NEED TO GO ON ABOUT THAT? WE GOTTA REELECT JOE TO STOP TRUMP! And yeah, they're really doing the blue no matter who stuff.
With the genocide joe stuff comes up at rallies, the people are escorted out with people shouting four more years, but to be fair, i respect that, the genocide joe people are obnoxious and given their crappy attitude id cheer as they were escorted out too. That I approve of.
But yeah other than they they dont wanna discuss a primary. They dont wanna discuss Biden's age. They just want everyone to vote blue no matter who to stop trump again.
And that;s where we are now. With an 81 year old president who may be suffering from cognitive decline (im still mixed/agnostic on this, but i think its a valid question as to his mental state), and, lets be honest, that special report was a conservative TRYING to make him look old so keep that in mind, im just jumping on the this is a serious issue train because he F-ed up his "im totally not senile" press conference by...acting senile. And the democrats are trying to silence and suppress discussion.
The Daily Show Strikes Back
Which is where Jon Stewart comes in.
He's a relic of a past era. He was part of the 1990s-2015 era of politics where satire was funny, making fun of both sides was funny, and we didnt take elections as seriously from an existential standpoint as we do now. And while yes, i will say trump does add a grave "this guy might end democracy" vibe to his campaigns, i dont wish to downplay the threat, but the dems are just so used to pushing these narratives and conditioning their voters to not question them that they seem to forget that YEAH, MAYBE WE SHOULD CRITICIZE JOE BIDEN MORE. MAYBE HIS AGE IS AN ISSUE. AND MAYBE THE DEMOCRATS SHOULD BE MORE ACCOUNTABLE TO THEIR VOTERS.
And they dont like that. They're used to just saying "but trump" and bullying everyone into accepting their narrative. They're not used to genuine criticism, especially on a highly visible platform on cable news. They're used to just getting their way and telling the voters they're wrong for questioning them. And im sorry, but that's not how democracy is supposed to work. Jon Stewart is right, and I hope he keeps taking it to the Biden administration and keeps keeping it real and keeping them honest. I've had more than enough of this manufacturing consent garbage. I never liked it. Only reason im less critical this time is because 1) biden did some genuinely good things that i like, and 2) yeah, trump literally is a threat. But that doesnt mean I LIKE what the dems are doing, or I wanna give them a pass. hence why I just spent the past 4 hours writing this. SPeaking of which, going to bed now, peace out. But yes. We should be criticizing our leaders. Jon Stewart is right. The democrats and the nay sayers are wrong. And democracy belongs to the voters. These people are here to represent US. We are THEIR bosses. And we need to hold them accountable. We shouldnt just let the dems walk all over us and get away with crap. Even if the alternative is a de facto fascist.Because what good is democracy if we cant actually practice it anyway.
I will likely vote Biden, but that doesnt mean we cant keep it real and keep it honest and criticize him where criticism belongs. Most people end up voting for one of these buttholes anyway. it doesnt mean we LIKE them, it just means they're less offensive than the other. Normally id consider third parties, but i aint doing that with the fascist on the republican ticket, and also because no third party candidate is actually more attractive than biden this election cycle. Sorry, just how I see it. Dude is genuinely earning a vote if Dean Phillips isnt the nominee.
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