As White House officials weigh how much to give in to his demands, rift grows between president and senator from West Virginia
It’s worth leaving a comment to let the Biden Administration know that you want the greenhouse gas reduction measures in the Inflation Reduction Act preserved
Then why aren’t they winning primaries left and right?
I think you severely underestimate how right-wing this country is. That’s the people’s fault, not the politicians’.
Because the leadership of their own party is fighting for establishment-friendly candidates against them tooth and nail with tens of millions of dollars every election cycle, a lot of gaslighting and the full force of the party apparatus behind them.
It’s frankly a herculean feat every time one of them overcome all that and even then, the leadership has been known to pull their support from the general election or even support the Republican candidate to avoid anyone from the left who might upset their corrupt status quo.
If they were that popular, no amount of campaign ads would defeat them. Campaign ads aren’t mind control. Dollars aren’t votes.
Americans vote for politicians who share their values, and let’s face it: most Americans’ values are firmly right-wing.
You clearly have no clue about how effective gaslighting and other propaganda can be or how shallow understanding of the candidates many voters have.
Progressive policy positions are almost universally more popular than gutless centrist ones, yet the centrist candidates backed by tens of millions worth of ads keep winning.
Do you really think that’s a coincidence? Do you really think that the two giant corporations masquerading as political parties would spend BILLIONS of dollars on ads every election cycle if they didn’t sway voters?
If so, you’re a bizarre combination of ludicrously naive and profoundly cynical 🤦
What gaslighting?
You mean like Biden’s ridiculous declaration of how great the economy is while everyone is either homeless or teetering on the brink? Yeah, that isn’t fooling anyone. It is painfully obvious that Biden is Republican Lite, not progressive.
You mean like Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign messaging? It was limper than an overcooked noodle. “I’m with her”? Really? They may as well have gone with “it’s her turn; how dare you lousy ingrates even consider voting for anyone else!” That’s why she lost the general election. As for why she won the primary, real simple: Bernie Sanders is way too far left for most Americans. He was all over the news the entire time, so don’t tell me he didn’t get any publicity. He was on the primary ballot, so don’t tell me he got shut out of the election.
You were doing so well with the accurate criticism of the Hillary and Biden campaigns but then you had to resort to their own propaganda talking points 🤦
Every policy position of his polls at 60-80% when not connected to his name. For that to happen, he has to be extremely personally unpleasant or the victim of an effective gaslighting smear campaign. By all accounts, he’s extremely caring and genuine, if a little crotchety, so that leaves one possibility.
If by “he” you mean Trump rather than Bernie, you’re right. Compared to his standing as a realistic challenger for the nomination and thus the presidency, he received LAUGHABLE amounts of coverage in the media! Even when admitting it, they put him in the category “democrat but not her”. Same deal with the 2020 primaries. 🤦
Which doesn’t mean much when the people hosting and controlling the contests are blatantly taking sides against him, in violation of their own bylaws.
Two, actually:
Pollsters also said Hillary Clinton was going to win in a landslide, and it’s pretty hard to believe that bona fide progressives wouldn’t vote for a bona fide progressive, so I’m leaning heavily toward #2.
No, I mean Bernie Sanders. I was blasted with Sanders spam constantly on social media in 2016. No one had any excuse for not knowing who he was and what he stood for.
In the 2020 primaries, the biggest concern was making 200% sure Trump does not get a second term. The primary voters decided that the best way to do this was to elect a centrist that would appeal to the right-wing not-so-undecideds that this godforsaken country is so depressingly full of, and even that only barely worked. Maybe you disagree, and maybe you’re right and they’re wrong, but I’m sure you can understand that there was an extremely dire situation with absolutely no room for mistakes.
If you want to fix that, fill Congress with progressives and pass a Constitutional amendment mandating approval voting or something similar. And yeah, that’s on us voters, too.
I’m going to need some details on this before I can respond meaningfully.
No, that’s another commonly believed distortion of reality. Pollsters concluded that there was a high probability that she would win the popular vote, which she did.
That the polls were about the EC and that they mentioned anything about the size of victory is gross misunderstanding at best and much more likely a convenient way to deliberately sow doubt about data that proves leftist policy positions much more popular than your own, whether you’re a Republican or Republican Lite like the Dem leadership.
Which means that bona-fide progressives, especially young voters, were discouraged by the constant fawning of the media constantly declaring someone who was NEVER a bona-fide progressive the inevitable winner and didn’t risk their job or jump through a ton of out of state voting hoops (in the case of college students) to vote against someone that both the commentators and the referees had already all but declared the winner.
DID vote for both Hillary and Biden in the general at MUCH higher rates than Hillary’s followers did in 08, though.
…and the rest of what you said was also as if it was taken directly from the notes of Neera Tanden, so I’m just gonna stop wasting my breath now. Have the day you deserve.