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Posted
1 minute ago, Brian Fantana said:

Any Democrat with openly leftist views that tries to burst into the mainstream is almost always actively squashed by the Party.

Sorry, I think these are just excuses at this point. It's undeniable that the Democratic establishment is pathetic and a failure. The party has NEVER been less popular with  voters that I can remember. I've always believed the left is filled with incredible organizers and terrible strategists. They've had 10 years since Bernie arrived on the national scene and have nothing to show for it. The most disheartening part for me is the unwillingness of the left to critique themselves or adjust their strategies.   

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Posted
5 minutes ago, safe sex said:

Fair enough. I appreciate you sharing. The majority of my contact with the homeless is with people who are very new to it and in Austin, and I was being very serious about the difference in response I would get using the respective word. Perhaps there is a contextual difference there.

Regardless, thanks.

Thank YOU for giving a fuck about the human being sitting in front of you in a world where most people just look away. 

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Posted
Just now, Bozo_Casanova said:

You know, this is a funny one. Giving people money is a dilemma because a most of them do use it in irresponsible ways, very often to hurt themselves. They will buy food and necessities, but even those choices are often bad. I don’t want to help pay for the fentanyl that kills someone.

I don't want to pay for them to go to jail or get hassled by law enforcement, so I'd much rather contribute to a mature and compassionate social safety net worthy of the wealthiest society in human history.

This being America, however, my hopes are not high.

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Posted
6 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

And also, Bernie is one of the few mainstream politicians that has maintained largely the same policy positions on the same issues for the entirety of his political career. It's extremely rare to find any politician that sticks to his guns like that. Whether they agree with him or not, most people have at least some level of respect for him because of that, and the level of popularity he has maintained over the decades has made it impossible for the Party to discard him, even though they would certainly like to.

Bernie is a real one, and I love him for it. 

But this is another problem with the left. Always being on the right side is a bullshit purity test. People learn, change, and grow. I want candidates that can listen and change their opinion. A willingness to admit mistakes is actually good (and preferable IMO). 

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Posted
Just now, Hank Kingsley said:

Sorry, I think these are just excuses at this point. It's undeniable that the Democratic establishment is pathetic and a failure. The party has NEVER been less popular with  voters that I can remember. I've always believed the left is filled with incredible organizers and terrible strategists. They've had 10 years since Bernie arrived on the national scene and have nothing to show for it. The most disheartening part for me is the unwillingness of the left to critique themselves or adjust their strategies.   

I mean you're not wrong. Mamdani seems like the best strategist the left has seen in a long time. Obama had great strategy but can't really be categorized as a leftist. And it's a moot point because Mamdani could never run for President anyway, assuming he actually wins the mayorship and does well.

The point I was making is that while leftist policies are largely popular among the electorate, the Democratic establishment would never allow a leftist to be the Presidential nominee. Bernie is as close as it's ever gotten or likely ever going to get. Moneyed interests are what's most important to mainstream Democrats, and that's not likely to ever change.

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Posted (edited)
18 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

There's Greg Casar, who's in Texas.

At the state and local level, there are many outside NYC as well. The organization's support is so powerful that even someone like Jose Garza can easily win re-election because of it.

National names and candidates won't happen until one of them shows us something in a federal office. If the Dems supported DSA candidates the way the GOP supported Tea Party and MAGA candidates, it would've already happened. But the donor class will never allow it.

Speaking of Casar.

Lloyd Doggett will be 80 in January 2027.

 

Edited by David Dennison
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Posted
1 minute ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Bernie is a real one, and I love him for it. 

But this is another problem with the left. Always being on the right side is a bullshit purity test. People learn, change, and grow. I want candidates that can listen and change their opinion. A willingness to admit mistakes is actually good (and preferable IMO). 

The irony is that Bernie has been on the receiving end of the purity tests as often as not- Hillary Clinton and The Groups burned him at the stake for suggesting that rural Vermont and New York City  should have different approaches to gun regulation. 
 

Posted
2 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

I want candidates that can listen and change their opinion. A willingness to admit mistakes is actually good (and preferable IMO). 

Sure, that would be great. That's not what the Democratic Party wants. They want people that behave like Wesley Bell and they largely have nothing but contempt for their base. That's the main difference between them and the GOP. The GOP despises their base as well, but they pretend not to enough to keep them captured.

Posted (edited)
34 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

So… this is an incredibly good example of the distance between the academia, policy think tanks, and ideology that powers the progressive movement and the people the movement seeks to serve. 

I  understand you are coming from a good place, but it really doesn’t. Im not picking on you. This is a PSA:


“Unhoused” does not provide more dignity and less stigma. It obscures reality and confers the moral license to look away.

I spent years actively volunteering with the homeless. I’ve cooked for them, cried with them, washed their feet, raised money for programs, spent the night with them at the cold weather shelter and so on. My wife volunteers with a homeless support program. My mother was homeless, and died as a result of her homelessness. So that’s my bona fides on this.

People who actually spend years with the homeless mostly hate the term “unhoused.” It reduces an extraordinarily complex and devastating syndrome to a real estate problem. 

They are not just ‘unhoused’ people. They are homeless people, which is to say they are trapped in a self-reinforcing process of slow dehumanization,  spiritual/psychological decay and isolation. 

To call them “unhoused” implies that the problem can be solved by providing housing only, or housing first, and that simply isn’t true. In some ways that’s as bad as sending them back to the jungle or to jail, or perhaps worse than jail, since jail offers the remote but occasional possibility of stabilization and rehab. 
 

Anyway, sorry to go off- but I speak for a lot of people on this one. Just say homeless. 

this is my whole "label argument" ... without consent labeling hispanics "Latinx", cishet white women with their fucking pronoun tags on emails, calling those who don't have a home to live in the unhoused, all of it. look, it's well meaning, and in a vacuum the intent really matters, but the fucking problem is that there is NOTHING behind these intentions other than labeling. definitions, word choice and academic masturbation.

Biden was FAN-FUCKING-STASTIC but he was two decades too late. He was starting to implement a progressive policy agenda but public perception was well past the tipping point and his desire to stay out of the limelight because of what Trump did before him, Biden's fear of speaking / stuttering, and his poor health only made it worse.

Chuck Schumer and the rest of these assholes pander to the labeling lobby and then do absolutely jack shit.

you know what the labelled needed last time Dems had a monopoly? Voting Rights Act, Federal Equality Act, legislative student loan reform, and much more for working class and middle class PEOPLE .... ALL PEOPLE. We did get the infrastructure/inflation bill which was monumental as well as the CHIPS bill but we needed much much more. The fact that they couldn't get these so-called priorities done is proof of their apathy, hypocrisy and ineffectiveness. Yeah yeah the other Joe from WVA was a wolf in sheep's clothing and that attention whore but Sinema is a fucking bi-sexual woman for fuck's sake. Don't even get me started on a DOJ that had the fucking balls to be aggressive in prosecutions. 

That's just the tip of the iceberg with the problems of the Dem party.

so instead of taking the label movement and being grateful (which I used to be), I want to shove it right up their asses and say, IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER. WE NEED REAL CHANGE ASSHOLES.

 

and nuance can be lost here - as between me and my neighbor, labels do matter, I appreciate my friends using their pronouns to signal allyship, and I do think it matters to stop calling hispanics Latinx and I do think unhoused or experiencing homelessness is important (I am involved with these folks in volunteer service) but when it comes to the political class? they can get fucked until they cause real change to occur.

Edited by troph
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Posted
22 minutes ago, chainsaw said:

There's Greg Casar, who's in Texas.

At the state and local level, there are many outside NYC as well. The organization's support is so powerful that even someone like Jose Garza can easily win re-election because of it.

National names and candidates won't happen until one of them shows us something in a federal office. If the Dems supported DSA candidates the way the GOP supported Tea Party and MAGA candidates, it would've already happened. But the donor class will never allow it.

Dems are imo trying to actively fill the void "left" by the republican party going far right. they pick up some donors here or there, but fail to realize the donor class has at least in part also moved far right. it's completely fucked up.

the answer to lying republican populism is a real working class, middle class party on the left.

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

Sure, that would be great. That's not what the Democratic Party wants. They want people that behave like Wesley Bell and they largely have nothing but contempt for their base. That's the main difference between them and the GOP. The GOP despises their base as well, but they pretend not to enough to keep them captured.

The world is moving at a frantic pace and things are changing quickly. Democratic voters are angry with the Democratic Party right now.  The polling is awful, Schumer and Jeffries are unpopular, Pelosi has already faded off into the distance. The establishment has been in denial, but hard to ignore what's happening. 

The time to create actual change is now, and the left has produced no one for people to rally around. It's a complete fuckup and it pisses me off. 

Posted
3 minutes ago, troph said:

Biden was FAN-FUCKING-STASTIC but he was two decades too late. He was starting to implement a progressive policy agenda but public perception was well past the tipping point and his desire to stay out of the limelight because of what Trump did before him, Biden's fear of speaking / stuttering, and his poor health only made it worse.

He was great on some things and not so great on others. I'm grateful to him for some of the things he did, including beating the brakes off Trump in 2020, but he also cost the Democrats a great deal going forward with his stubbornness.

Posted
14 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

The irony is that Bernie has been on the receiving end of the purity tests as often as not- Hillary Clinton and The Groups burned him at the stake for suggesting that rural Vermont and New York City  should have different approaches to gun regulation. 
 

He also avoided describing Israel's actions as a "genocide" which has produced lots of criticism. 

Let's make things better before demanding perfection. 

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Posted
25 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Speaking of Casar.

Lloyd Doggett will be 80 in January 2027.

 

I love 'em both. Correct me if I'm wrong, but do candidates need to actually live in the district in which they are running? I feel like I've read somewhere that they only need to be Texas residents. I hope there's a way Doggett can retire on his own terms, but yes he is old.

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Posted
18 hours ago, Hank Kingsley said:

LatinX almost felt like a psyop. Such a weird moment that come out of nowhere. 

 

 

I mean the term has been around in higher ed since the mid 2000s. I first heard the term my 2nd year in grad school for my doctorate, which was around 2015-16. I was like “what the fuck does that mean?”

But guess what also grew in popularity around that time? Social media. 

It came out of nowhere because more progressives in grad school were using it on socials which has such a wide reach. If it weren’t for that, the term would have stayed in its higher ed box.

 

Posted
2 hours ago, kevwun said:

Is this the thread where I can complain about the move from homeless to unhoused?  What's the fucking difference?  Does unhoused provide better shelter from the elements or more food?

It's dumb as shit.

Posted
7 minutes ago, Hank Kingsley said:

He also avoided describing Israel's actions as a "genocide" which has produced lots of criticism. 

Let's make things better before demanding perfection. 

See this is also a major issue everyone has in general. He 100% deserves criticism for that. He should absolutely be taken to task for the goofy ass argument he presented to justify not using the word.

The problem is that people take any criticism whatsoever as "cancelling" someone, or claim that by criticizing one aspect of their commentary, we're "demanding perfection". It's bullshit. I'm the loudest anti-Israel poster on this site, I'm well aware of his idiotic refusal to use the word genocide to describe Israel's actions, but that doesn't mean I now hate Bernie Sanders because I disagree with him on the terminology.

Just because most people can't take criticism without feeling "cancelled" doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.

Posted

I've always found the concept of homelessness fascinating. It's so multifaceted. 

In a society like ours there's no reason for anyone to be homeless, but yet we have a fuckton of it going on. I have contributed one homeless person to Austin or somewhere around here, but not after giving them a place to stay for years for free. Its was actually crazy, no matter how much I wanted to help or tried to help there was no helping. I couldn't just keep enabling it and now who knows where they are. It's sad. 

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Posted
1 minute ago, Brian Fantana said:

See this is also a major issue everyone has in general. He 100% deserves criticism for that. He should absolutely be taken to task for the goofy ass argument he presented to justify not using the word.

The problem is that people take any criticism whatsoever as "cancelling" someone, or claim that by criticizing one aspect of their commentary, we're "demanding perfection". It's bullshit. I'm the loudest anti-Israel poster on this site, I'm well aware of his idiotic refusal to use the word genocide to describe Israel's actions, but that doesn't mean I now hate Bernie Sanders because I disagree with him on the terminology.

Just because most people can't take criticism without feeling "cancelled" doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.

Good post and I agree with your position. But Bernie is the OG so perfection is not required. If a newer face made that mistake it would be disqualifying to a lot of people. 

Posted
2 minutes ago, immamac said:

I've always found the concept of homelessness fascinating. It's so multifaceted. 

In a society like ours there's no reason for anyone to be homeless, but yet we have a fuckton of it going on. I have contributed one homeless person to Austin or somewhere around here, but not after giving them a place to stay for years for free. Its was actually crazy, no matter how much I wanted to help or tried to help there was no helping. I couldn't just keep enabling it and now who knows where they are. It's sad. 

it's completely intertwined with our judicial and mental health systems. we could solve those problems if we wanted to. we don't, clearly.

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Posted
Just now, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

it's completely intertwined with our judicial and mental health systems. we could solve those problems if we wanted to. we don't, clearly.

It isn't that easy. Mental health being available doesn't mean that the person is going to use it or actually continue on the path prescribed to fix it. 

Mental health can't mean a fucking babysitter in a home for crazy people. Some people are just fucked up. 

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Posted
1 minute ago, Hank Kingsley said:

Good post and I agree with your position. But Bernie is the OG so perfection is not required. If a newer face made that mistake it would be disqualifying to a lot of people. 

Sure, but there's also a stark difference between being hesitant to call it a genocide, and outwardly refusing to do so because you are captured by AIPAC money. The former is an understandable, if highly arguable, position that you should be prepared to defend when pressed. The latter should absolutely get you tarred and feathered by your constituency because it is an entirely indefensible position, and unfortunately it is the position that a lot of Democrats have taken.

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Posted (edited)

There are some people who can't be helped that should be institutionalized for their own and society's good.  Because the system that was in place was being badly abused, Regan shitcanned the whole thing in typical lets overreact and make things even worse fashion.  We are still living with the consequences today and probably for the rest of our lives since we don't fix actual problems anymore.

Edited by kevwun
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Posted
34 minutes ago, immamac said:

I've always found the concept of homelessness fascinating. It's so multifaceted. 

In a society like ours there's no reason for anyone to be homeless, but yet we have a fuckton of it going on. I have contributed one homeless person to Austin or somewhere around here, but not after giving them a place to stay for years for free. Its was actually crazy, no matter how much I wanted to help or tried to help there was no helping. I couldn't just keep enabling it and now who knows where they are. It's sad. 

If you are looking for a model, go see Community First Village on Hog Eye road. People say that’s too expensive, but in reality it’s much more cost effective than anything else, for the simple reason that it works. 

Posted
2 hours ago, troph said:

Biden was FAN-FUCKING-STASTIC but he was two decades too late. He was starting to implement a progressive policy agenda but public perception was well past the tipping point and his desire to stay out of the limelight because of what Trump did before him, Biden's fear of speaking / stuttering, and his poor health only made it worse.

 

2 hours ago, Brian Fantana said:

He was great on some things and not so great on others. I'm grateful to him for some of the things he did, including beating the brakes off Trump in 2020, but he also cost the Democrats a great deal going forward with his stubbornness.

I think history is going to judge Biden pretty unkindly, and I think that would have been true even if Harris won.  

In hindsight, trying to tie together infrastructure investment, climate, jobs, social welfare, reinvestment in rural communities, etc., didn't work either to improve the general welfare, is getting rolled back under Trump, and earned very little kudos by voters.  

There's also one single thing he could have accomplished, almost fully under his control, that would have stemmed the tide of authoritarianism and that's to make sure Trump was put on trial for inciting an insurrection (and I'm presuming he'd have been found guilty).   

Posted
4 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

There's also one single thing he could have accomplished, almost fully under his control, that would have stemmed the tide of authoritarianism and that's to make sure Trump was put on trial for inciting an insurrection (and I'm presuming he'd have been found guilty).   

he fails his history check - failure to hold fascists accountable only guarantees that they will soon be back. And in greater numbers.



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