“What’s funny about that is they assume my ambition is positional. They assume my ambition is a title or a seat. My ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, elected officials come and go, single payer healthcare is forever.”
It’s really great to see one of our politicians answer questions as if they were actually a public servant concerned with the good of the country. I mean, obviously.
But it’s equally tragic how unique it is for a politician to answer like that, and how many people in her own party (in addition to 99% of Republicans) will assume it is BS political talking points to suggest that somebody is serving a high profile political position for any reason other than blind personal ambition.
Baby accounts in here chirping about Jon Stewart and AOC running for president after killing Reddit. Getting prepared for the primary. AstroTurf moving over here.
The absolute waste of money and time it would be to AstroTurf on Lemmy really just makes me more skeptical to every user crying “bot” than anything.
It’s not a surprise that people with fringe or more radical opinions exist on Lemmy, an alternative platform
thx for confirming it’s happening
I was here before you by two years so the bot masters must be way ahead of you.
They’re good at pissing away money so yeah
What do you mean?
Ah yes democrat stalwarts AOC and Jon Stewart /s
And some “lower” positions can have much larger sweeping effects.
Speaker of the House could be impactful almost immediately. And with control of the House and Senate, Trump and JD are one impeachment and removal away from welcoming the Speaker as POTUS. I know the majorities need to be massive but let me dream for a moment.
I don’t know if they’ve got the political instincts. Too many times AOC ends up in unforced error territory.
too many times
You mean that one time that she voted to fund the Iron Dome.
So many times, guys.
I take pride in every down vote I’m getting in this thread for bringing up a well reasoned and consistent critique of AOC, and then watching which emotional reactionary decide that this means I hate AOC, when I litterally volunteered for her campaign in 2018.
Her political instincts have been shown to be bad too many times. The Israel vote was one example among many. And I’m ceding that she did get to the right place eventually. But someone who is only right “eventually” isn’t someone you want as president, at least not ideally, and right now, in the pre-pre-pre-primary phase, that’s when we talk about “ideally”.
And the criticism on Israel isn’t even how it all ended, because eventually she got the right place. It’s about how she got there, and how she allowed herself to be outflanked by MTG of all the shitty people in the world. If you are a progressive and your political instincts result in you getting out flanked from the left by MTG, you have bad instincts.
Why does AOC get a pass for funding a genocide mid genocide when no other progressives found it challenging to get the issue rate from the start?
Why does AOC a pass decisions we regularly criticize liberals for?
Ilhan Omar didn’t vote to find hard to get those votes right. Omar has faaar better political instincts than AOC.
If nothing else, Trump has proven that this can be a winning strategy.
What can?
Trump is useful to people with effectively infinite money. AOC, quite the opposite.
I 100% get not committing to run right now, it would be stupid to do so.
“In this op-ed that Bezos paid for in The Washington Post, there was a veiled threat — it was the elite saying if you want this job, you just stepped out of line,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “What’s funny about that is they assume my ambition is positional. They assume my ambition is a title or a seat. My ambition is way bigger than that. My ambition is to change this country. Presidents come and go, elected officials come and go, single payer healthcare is forever.”
But I sure as fuck hope she realizes becoming president is our best shot at that.
Shed drive down ballot races like Obama did, but isn’t as cocky and obsessed with personal power to ignore the DNC after winning like Obama did. Shed name a progressive chair.
Bringing in a wave of progressives and putting the party firmly on the progressive side of the divide is absolutely the biggest thing she (or anyone) can do to get us single payer healthcare.
So like I said, hopefully she’s planning to run, just smart enough to not say it yet.
So like I said, hopefully she’s planning to run, just smart enough to not say it yet.
Being a Representative, she’s got an entire other election to win between now and the next Presidential election anyway.
Announcing that she plans to go for President (and would therefore be leaving the House) might attract primary challengers.
I’m not telling her what to do, she’s clearly better at this stuff than I’ll ever be
I mean this completely seriously:
Not with that attitude.
Maybe without that attitude it’s still true, but we need more people than AOC even if they’re not “as good”
Your point is well taken. There is the small matter of my having moved abroad… Sorry for that.
Like drinking or eating meat, I still follow American politics against my better judgment, and occasionally I opine.
I mean she’s not great. She’s probably the weakest among the squad cohort at actually playing the game of politics. She gives a good speech but she regularly gets her ankles broken because she seems to have, like the article demonstrates, a very calculating nature, or at least developed one after sher first two years in Congress.
And that’s bad. Like, very bad if you seek higher office, because people are done with the whole not saying what you mean thing.
Many of us are done with saying nothing with meaning thing.
I’m more concerned about how she regularly missteps and misplays moments. She genuinely doesn’t have great political instincts and is usually last to the table among her peers when it comes to doing or saying the right thing. It’s kind of baffling.
Both Ayana Presley and Ilhan Omar are leagues ahead of being in the right side of issues and leading when things matter the most. AOC trails them on issues.
Like, it’s gotten bad to the point where I don’t know if AOC could make it through a primary. Her ability to get a question and form an answer that is a good, correct take, the first time, without having to test it. It’s not great.
She is so threatening to the Epstein class - so much so that it causes comments like this from “ordinary people”
I mean somewhat. Not nearly as threatening as Ro Khanna though. Someone also who has shown faaaar better political instincts. Ro might be a bit more boring and not as pretty, but they are FAR better at the game compared to AOC, who is a bit of a B student in her class.
It’s the unforced errors she keeps piling up that give me the most pause.
Oh, you’re not a serious person. Got it, sorry for wasting my time
So you want someone stupider, or at least better at seeming like they don’t think? I don’t think I take your meaning. Politicians are meant to be ‘calculating’, it’s a famously viperous workplace. I prefer one that thinks, and I don’t mind if you can tell when they’re doing it.
People should be less obsessed with optics, and more oriented towards what politicians do.
Maybe you just don’t follow politics much, but this critique of AOC isn’t new and we’ve been getting on her about it for years. Instincts matter in politics, a lot. Getting through a presidential primary is hard.
Just try and notice how your now defending the things that we specifically went out of our way to remove from our politics as progressives, because it’s coming from someone you identify with as being in your team.
Look, politicians don’t need cheerleaders. They need critics who can make them stronger, and if AOC does want to run, shes got some real issues that have been piling up shell need to address. And yes, this developed tendency to become more and more couched hlin her language, to become more and more politically calculating, it’s a real problem.
You’re not wrong. But I also think this point of view is perceived as a kind of auto-fellatio.
I think the negative reaction from us, the great unwashed, is due to people being so sick of political processes devolving into a meta-game that revolves primarily around the ability to think cynically and act tactically.
Meanwhile we’re out in the world, dealing with fallout from actions in that sphere that don’t make any kind of sense to the material reality of most people. People with rent to pay and groceries to afford and gas to pump.
Playing 4-D chess with the law of averages, playing the long game, and cornering other narcissistic kitten-eaters in saying and supporting things that, on their face, sound horrible… We’re just not sophisticated enough to understand it’s part of the process. We have problems that need solving right now and whatever tactical victory that moves an abstract chess piece forward doesn’t seem to do anything to remedy that.
I take your points, but we’re in the pre primary stage. If that’s not the time to be critical if the details, when do we get to be?
Also, it’s a political forum. It’s supposed to be a safe space for auto fellating in these topics. And maybe I misread or over read, but that auto fellating thing, it’s the critique I’m making of AOC too. She become too calculating, too much like Pelosi.
I also think AOC can fix these issues, but they were issues she had 2 years ago too. and they aren’t issues her cohort shares, they are unique to her.
Bernie takes hard interviews. Ilhan takes hard interviews. Khanna takes hard interviews.
AOC only goes for softball safe space media opportunities any more. And she’s weaker because if it. She can fix that issue and strengthen her game in this regard, but that’s on her.
Fair enough points, I can take them at face value. I just grew up very disillusioned with leftist infighting generally, so I tend to see any leftward scrutiny with a jaundiced eye. In a first past the post system, the side that is least critical of their candidate is going to mainly win I feel, and though I know the value of being critical too well, living in this system makes me of two minds about it.
Thanks, Raw Story, for the textbook clickbait. What a shit outlet.
It really is shitty clickbait, try going to the site without ublockorigin, just with adblock, there are moving advertisements all over, a deal breaker for me, and the article is like two sentences, last I checked. I usually skip any post with them as a source, didn’t realize it this time.
This
OP should have updated the subject or included the punchline directly in the body
once upon a time that’s how headlines and news were written–so you could get the gist of the news by skimming headlines (of your printed newspaper) and perhaps the first short paragraph of an article.
News articles are still written like that; Raw Story just happens to be tabloid trash that Redditor types love like flies love shit, and current events comm moderators don’t moderate for quality except for the most extreme cases.
“single payer healthcare is forever”
The chronically underfunded NHS creaks as I weep.
I don’t disagree with her point though. In the UK, after decades of neoliberalism reigning supreme, I am often extremely depressed at how it’s changed things culturally. I was born in the 90s, so all of my life, I have seen the people who are struggling most scrutinised ever closer, and the state becomes more and more like a business.
If the NHS didn’t already exist, I can’t fathom there being political will to implement it right now. There would be far too much outcry over people “reaping rewards from the system despite not contributing to it”. There was that kind of opposition when the NHS was founded too, but far less of it. It was a different world. As I understand it, the Reagan and Thatcher era of politics were a big part of what caused things to change.
Learning the history helps ground me. A political philosopher I read a bunch of last year who influenced me greatly was Frederic Jameson, who advocated that we should “always historicise”, because connecting to our history is a great tool in resisting the cultural logic of late stage capitalism.
Or to put it a different way: the society we live in has a way of making itself seem eternal and immutable, but things have not always been this way, and they need not always remain this way. If AOC spearheaded a campaign that led to single payer healthcare, but the scheme was later repealed, that achievement would still last forever, in that it could serve as a template for those in future.
I don’t know if any of this makes sense. I’m just depressed and trying to clutch at hope. I’d say I don’t know if it’s working, but hey, I’m still alive — that’s something. I should probably get some sleep though
There is a solution for that, tax the rich and fund the NHS. This isn’t rocket science.
Yeah, but my point is that there’s currently a lack of political will to do that
Insomnia, eh?
Yeah, the NHS is horribly underfunded - but I think it’s still one of very few things the UK can still be proud of. I think most people wouldn’t mind paying a little more tax, if it were specifically ringfenced for the NHS. Yeah, I doubt it would be created today, and it’s constantly fighting creeping privatisation but it still has a great deal of public support. And desperate as services are these days, I’m still alive because of it.
The greatest lie ever told about the NHS is that we need to pay more tax to fund it properly.
We don’t.
We need to unwind a web of outsourcing agreements that siphon money away from care provision and into the pockets of the 1%.
There’s enough money if you remove the grift
Edit typo
A decade or so ago my mum was in hospital for a couple of days. She had to go for a test and so missed her evening meal. So at around 7 or 8 one had to be brought to her. It was a small microwave meal for 1, still in its plastic microwave container. One of her nurses told her that the charge to the NHS for this single meal from the catering company was £45
Yep. I’m on the NDIS in Australia. You can get a quote for out of pocket for say 40$/hr or whatever. But as soon as companies hear NDIS, they charge the govt the max. It’s ridiculous.
Even though the NDIS funds only a small portion of the population, it costs MORE than Medicare which funds most of the country. Crazy shit
A while back, I spent a couple of weeks in hospital despite there being nothing medically wrong with me
My carer had died a few months prior, and social care services were fucking around a lot so I spent a long while without any daily living support at all, except the occasional friend travelling across the country to spend a weekend helping me. A friend who hadn’t heard from me for a while called emergency services, because they were worried I might have tried to kill myself, because the last thing they had heard from me was pretty concerning in that respect (I was in a bad place mental health wise).
When paramedics got there, they found me on the floor, having had a fall. I hadn’t even in a week, and was severely dehydrated. They took me to hospital, got me hydrated and stuff, but then I was in limbo for a while. They couldn’t discharge me, because it wasn’t safe to send me back home without care. But the various services that were meant to be supporting people like me just weren’t working. It was basically like the NHS and social care services being the meme with two versions of spiderman pointing to each other.
And so I took up a valuable hospital bed for multiple weeks, in a place that wasn’t well situated to even support me. It made me so angry because of the inefficiency of it all. It’s all so preventable, but there’s so much inefficiency.
And that’s not even counting all the x-rays I’ve had following a fall that I had because wheelchair services were fucking me around, so I had preventable falls that cost the NHS more money.
Glad you’re still here with us. For a variety of reasons, I’m similar. The average person is pretty pro-NHS, but when it comes to politicians, there seems to be a lack of political will to change anything.
I think something that makes it harder is that it’s not just a case of funding (though that is also needed), but a restructuring to reverse some of the insidious privatisation and outsourcing that’s so prevalent these days. Additionally, there needs to be more money put into skilled administrators — whenever there’s talks about cutting the fat from the NHS, pointing the fingers at “unnecessary” administrative staff is an easy tactic, but a lack of skilled administrators means that medical staff have to spend more time filling in forms and chasing up referrals.
The US and UK has the same problem of two party system and late stage capitalism. Although, the UK has a much more dramatic shift, not seen since the 1900s, because of the rise of Reform and Green Party.
The chronically underfunded NHS creaks as I weep.
Yeah this is an example of why you can never stop fighting for what’s right. The Epstein class will spend millions in order to not only save themselves taxes but put their own tax on us by privatizing essential services.
The chronically underfunded NHS creaks as I weep.
The NHS isn’t the problem. The chronical underfunding and privatisation is. The tories have both been underfunding it and selling it off to their gentlemen’s club cronies. Of course it doesn’t work. That doesn’t mean that nationalised healthcare is a bad idea.
The problem is Britain doesn’t have a left wing party with any power. Labour is just tory-light (and not that light anymore really). It was encouraging to see the greens doing so well but also very scary to see ‘reform’ doing even better. I put ‘reform’ in quotes because what they want to do is not reform anything but just to fuck everything up for everyone. They should call it the ‘fuckup’ party.
she didn’t answer the question at all
There won’t be anymore meaningful elections in the US. Just pageantry.
Everything that we thought made our country different and agencies for “checks and balances” were just an illusion
Yep Americans thought they where special.
It’s possible that the United States itself could collapse, and that democracy could exist in some form of whatever came after.
But in the United States as it exists now? It’s not even the same country.
I’d vote for her. I’d also vote for Bernie again, if he ran again. I don’t care about his age, all that would matter is he got into office, and established a cabinet, and had a good Vice President to take over.
UAW Boss Sean Fein would be a good candidate.
Well they need to get out and start doing media now. Regardless, a successful candidate is going to have to out in hundreds of hours in front of cameras and developing a level of comfort and ease of answering questions that only comes with practice and putting in the hours. It’s also one of my biggest critiques of AOC. She also hasn’t/isn’t putting in the reps in terms of media cycles. When they do, it’s very controlled and brief.
You are a fascist.
Explain how.
Explaim how you complain to management to get your critiics cancelled? You gave your hand away.
What did you get banned for being a gif hating loser in the other thread? I would never report you for being that kind of a loser; it’s far more fun to just mock you relentlessly when you have a psychological moment like that. Which was truly fun and brightened my day, so I do want to say thanks and I appreciate your participation. It was probably some one who agreed with me on how silly you were being that reported you. I would never do that, it’s far more entertaining to have you staying in the game.
For your participation yesterday, I sincerely appreciate it:
Now, into the comment at hand…
You can be and should be a critic of me but you should also have the charity to take my arguments on their face. I think AOC is mid among current progressives and I’ve outlined why several times in this thread. I can reiterate those points if you like and we can take it from there.
ha ha, you are pathetic.
She has work to do, because if she ran right now, she’d get eaten alive.
Notice that AOC doesn’t do very many hard interviews, and that when she gets a question asked of her that she isn’t prepared for, she stumbles.
AOC has been basically absent from leftwing media while plenty of other very solid progressives are out there putting in reps doing hard interviews in combative environments. AOC doesn’t do that and is only does very controlled media opportunities. That’s not good for someone who wants to be president. I don’t think she’s done the time like others have to be able to weather a primary.
AOC doesn’t do very many hard interviews
Define “hard”. If you mean antagonistic, that’s because she wisely tries not to waste too much time and energy boosting the false narratives of the billionaire-owned mass media that bear a lot of the blame for how things got awful enough for fascism to return.
she gets a question asked of her that she isn’t prepared for, she stumbles
As do pretty much anyone. Which is why she and most competent politicians make sure to be prepared for all possible pertinent questions.
It still depends btw: do you call refusing to entertain a deliberately false narrative “stumbling”?
AOC has been basically absent from leftwing media
That’s a bit of an exaggeration but she’s not made herself available as much as for example Ro Khanna, I’ll give you that.
Ro and most of the ones making that many media appearances don’t seem as genuine and principled, though.
Whether that’s due to the sheer volume of gotcha questions or because they ARE less principled, that’s not a good look to the ones they need to reach.
hard interviews in combative environments
AKA contributing to disinformation by accepting their clickbait false narratives as legitimately in the interest of the people.
AOC doesn’t do that and is only does very controlled media opportunities.
Yeah, imagine preferring to talk about the REAL issues rather than how everyone to the left of Ronald Reagan are either immature children or dangerous radicals 🙄
That’s not good for someone who wants to be president.
I’d argue the exact opposite. If you mud wrestle with a pig, the pig beats you with experience and you get filthy no matter how well you do.
I don’t think she’s done the time like others have to be able to weather a primary
Dude. The way she ENTERED politics was by going from volunteering for Bernie to unseating a 10-term incumbent who was the third ranking Dem representative in two years!
She has since easily beaten more right wing Dems favored by the DNC in primaries twice (and won unopposed except for the Republican nominee once).
If anyone knows how to beat overwhelming odds and win against the experienced establishment favorite, it’s her.
Fox news, Piers Morgon, are both very antogonistic as examples, and I would list Zeteo, any interview with Medhi or Pratt as a hard interview (I personally think Medhi is one of the bester interviewers in medi, hands down).
It’s not a matter of it being time wasting, it’s a matter of putting in reps and communicating a message. It’s about rhetoric and convincing an audience. Bernie finds time for those audiences. Ro Khanna finds time for those audiences. Ilhan finds time for those interviews. And go read the comments under those interviews: MAGA trust Bernie and Ro more than they do most of their own Republicans because Bernie and Ro have put in the reps, done the laps.
And to volley the question back over the net, why does AOC get an accountability pass when all the rest of her squad cohort don’t suffer from this same issue? Its not like they aren’t effective or productive members of Congress, I’d argue quite the opposite. It was not the Cortesse-Massie bill that got the Epstein files released it wash the Khanna Massie bill that did, and Ro found ample time to take his messages and arguments before the people while doing so.
It still depends btw: do you call refusing to entertain a deliberately false narrative “stumbling”?
Let’s take the example I gave. AOC got asked by dropsite if she supported her former chief of staff who is trying to oust Pelosi in California. A fairly gentle question from a friendly source about litterally the person who helped get you into Congress. And she fumbled it. Badly. In a way that should give any progressive pause.
When Ilhan Omar was attacked by a maga supporter at a recent event she didn’t back down. She litterally got in the attackers face in a way that should have made national headlines. We’re she running for another seat, it would have.
It’s fair to juxtapose AOC against her cohort, and she is at the back of that pack in my view. The pack is still leagues ahead of other Democrats but that’s beside the point, because now is when we need to make these evaluations.
I’d argue the exact opposite. If you mud wrestle with a pig, the pig beats you with experience and you get filthy no matter how well you do.
I think your an utter fool to believe you can get away from hard interviews. I will not support a candidate who can’t handle the pressure of a campaign or read the room or the moment. That’s how you get “Please clap.” Jeb, and “Nothing would fundamentally change Harris”.
These politicians are not your children. It’s not your job to protect them. They need to be held up and have their mettle tested before we need to rely upon them to be a backstop against fascism, not after.
You not only have to be able to get jnto the mud and learn to wrestle with the pigs, you need to be able to do so and win. I’m not interested in someone who hasn’t put the time in to win dirty fights.
The candidate will have to face down Tucker Carlson or Candice Owens, or any one of the innumerable shit birds who have piled up on the right.
Dude. The way she ENTERED politics was by going from volunteering for Bernie to unseating a 10-term incumbent who was the third ranking Dem representative in two years!
Yeah and for the first two years she was a fire brand. Then something happened and she became far more reserved and calculating. She genuinely changed after getting iced by Pelosi for occupying her office. I think it impacted her and she shifted her approach.
I need to see her taking harder more competitive interviews. I need to see her all over leftwing media and safe space interviews. I need to see her in spaces where her team doesn’t control the questions getting asked.
Because there are other progressives who had just as difficult if not more difficult fights than AOC has had, and they don’t seem to have a problem taking in those battles.
But to be fair, when is the last time that is there wasn’t a softball interview or debate? A huge portion of the US population have never seen a real debate lol
There have been softball interviews and debate for liberal/conservative/fascist candidates the corpos like. Leftist candidates, on the other hand, get a hostile treatment or get ignored entirely.
Bernie takes hard debates ALLL THE TIME and uncle is strong because if it.
Ro Khanna also. They take every media call they can and because of that they are very comfortable getting asked tough questions.
AOC got a softball from dropsite about endorsing her former chief of staff who is challenging Pelosi, and she dropped the ball in an utter what the fuck moment.
You gotta be tough to stand up to nonstop events and pressers and interviews that come with a campaign. AOC genuinely hasn’t been putting in the reps and it shows.
I love Bernie, but he’s terrible at choosing staff. I don’t want him as president because I think he’d lose the war after winning the battle of gaining the presidency. Now if my choices were orange shit stain or Bernie, I’d be pulling out all my Bernie merch, but he’s not ideal.
Jesus, the Tad Devine hire alone was a disqualification for me.
Bernie is 84 years old.
I am a huge fan of Bernie. Have been for over a decade. He is too old to be the president.
He’s also incredibly sharp for 84…but he’s 84…
He’ll be 86 at the next election.
As president you get way more stress and probably less sleep. More travel. He wouldn’t do well in the president’s office.
Yeah his opening came and gone, unfortunately. Time doesn’t care, it marches on.
And 90 by the time he is out of office, at least.
That’s the same thing everybody said last time and Bernie is in better physical, mental, and psychological condition than Trump.
better physical, mental, and psychological condition than Trump.
That bar is so low I’d need to dig a hole to find it.
Bernie for president and AOC for vice president? That’d be something.
IF he died in office, the position likely would be taken good care of
What if we had a candidate that is not on his 80s, maybe?
This “Bernie” mentality elected Trump twice already.
Of course, and because of that he would never win an election, because people won’t vote for him because “he’s too old”. Like I said, I don’t care about his age, or that he would likely die in office, perhaps even in the first year. I’d still vote for him, because I agree with him, and I want his ideas in that office. That’s why he’d need a good V.P. I don’t understand why anyone would care how old he is, as long as they agree with him. Is it because he would probably die in office? Why does that matter?
I don’t care about Trump’s age per se, I do care that he’s got dementia. Bernie doesn’t have dementia.
Anyway, it’s a pipe dream, and I’ll happily vote for one of his protégés, too.
More importantly, he’s too old, and not aggressive enough, to win. We need someone that knows how to build and run a political machine, that can seize control of the party and purge the old guard. A true populist that can play a crowd. Bernie unfortunately lacks the killer instinct to overcome the establishment.
Shouldn’t be getting downvotes for this. Bernie deserves to rest, he’s been saying the same message for decades and it’s up to us to make it better for him, now.
He would be more valuable as an advisor.
Less energy wasted on the bullshit.
Exactly. He’d make a wonderful cabinet member or top advisor.
If Bernie wants to rest, then he can rest.
He isn’t acting like a man that wants to rest.
The point of Bernie or AOC or Zohran or any socialist candidate is the movement behind them, which represents the will of the masses. The actual figurehead is largely irrelevant because everything they do is in the interest of their constituents. They might use their charisma to win (but usually it’s the movement that actually wins the campaign), but once they’re in power they just have to fulfill their promises, and they have staff to do this.
A regular politician, by contrast, enacts the will of the corporate class. In this way they’re mostly irrelevant too.
Bernie or AOC or Zohran
Or Kat Abughazaleh. If you don’t know her yet, you should look her up.
I like her, I hope she does well in the future, but she did lose her primary
I’d door-knock for her.
Sheesh, and I haven’t canvased for a candidate in almost 20 years.
I canvassed for Bernie. It was a good experience. And he won the state.
I phone banked for her in her 2018 campaign.
The problem is single player isn’t forever. Look at Germany. The entire healthcare system is on the verge of collapse.
No reform is forever. We should know this by now, as they reverse Roe v. Wade, erode labor protections, attack LGBTQ people, etc. The change we need is system-wide…
Germany isn’t single payer. It has a complicated dual system with public and private insurance allowing the highest earners and civil servants to go private, i.e. outside the solidarity system which causes the whole structure to collapse.
It’s also not universal, at least it wasn’t when I lived there: it’s payed for either by your employer or by social/unemployment office.
So there’s situations where you don’t have it, e.g. when you’re self-employed you’re expected to take care of it your self.
It with crash harder is there didn’t have private.
Say what now?
Your translator is stroking out.
No, i have American healthcare so i pay a bunch for insurance and can’t afford to see the doctor anyways so i had a few strokes.
Is this headline actually accurate?
Did this really leave the “political world” speechless?
why?
I’d vote for John Stewart if I was American. Look up how he supported the 911 firemen. He is the right mix of popular to be a viable candidate and obviously principled enough to be a second Obama.
Oh yes just what we need a second Obama. First Obama worked out so well for us.
Compared to literally every other American president in my lifetime, this is unironically true. I’m 47. What’s your point?
Tan suit
Mic drop
/s … Which is hopefully obvious
Lol, another Obama is exactly what is needed: a statesman and a diplomat, a rational person, someone who works to improve America rather tells fools that he is there for America but is actually only in it for himself and his mentor Putin. But America got to do America so…enjoy the shitshow.
Current situation is a direct result of first Obama
Indirect result - racist reactions to a black President.
I get what you’re saying, but Americans, for whatever reason, paint Obama as the farthest left option when he was centrist at best.
The “they go low, we go high” mentality sounds nice but we’re seeing that directly play out where establishment Dems play by the rules and are too scared or too paid off to fight for the people while the Republicans break the rules all the time. And we choose to “move on” rather than hold them accountable. So, they learn that they can just fuck everyone over and no one will charge them with any crimes. Exactly what Obama campaigned on.
Not to mention that, rather than bail out the people who were suffering during 08, he bailed out the banks who caused the crisis. And what did the banks do with the money? Lay people off still and use that money yo pay executive bonuses and for stock buybacks.
Also not to mention all the deportations and bombings across the world still. And the ACA being a right wing heritage foundation project that was adopted to provide more funding to privat healthcare insurers. Which many juat increased the prices of services to fleece taxpayers with so 🤷♂️
Obama is no comparison to Trump, of course, and I don’t hate Obama. But I also can’t forgive him for how ineffectual he actually was for the working class. We don’t need another “work across the aisle” “oh, let’s focus om the future, we don’t need to prosecute Trump or his administration” type candidate. We need one that will be an enemy of organized wealth and corporations so we can pull ourselves back out of authoritarian/billionaire control. The elite need to be held responsible. Otherwise, why would any citizen believe in the rule of law if it can be selectively applied?
I imagine many Virginians are feeling exactly that right now. They voted and approved a map and then their SC knocked it down because they felt like it. Meanwhile, the Republican maps are being forced through, held privately with no voter input, in some cases ongoing elections are even being halted with votes being thrown out to redistrict. All without any voter say to remove voter power. Why would anyone feel like their vote even matters anymore?
We need accountability. And I’m sorry, but a neoliberal Obama I don’t believe would hold any of them accountable.
Obama as the farthest left option when he was centrist at best.
I remember the arguments I had in 2008 with my lefty friends when they kept saying Obama was the most liberal candidate. I’d go over each of their positions and showed my reasoning and they wouldn’t even consider what I said but instead would get emotional and insist he was more liberal.
Hell, in his own book Obama talks about how Reagan was a huge role model for him.
Obama is a great example of how charisma can put you over the top. And I love the guy, I just wish he had been a progressive and realized early on that the Republicans would never compromise on anything and that they were always working in bad faith.
Just one small correction: although the 2008 bank bailout did happen during Obama’s presidency, it was the Bush administration who created it and signed it into law. This is usually framed as Bush being a class act and doing it to spare Obama the blowback of having to do the same (back in the days when presidential class was still a thing), but it seems not to have worked, as everybody still blames Obama entirely.
Entirely fair, you’re right. It looks like Obama tried to move TARP funds to make it easier for small businesses and new programs to receive funding. I stand corrected on that point.
I agree with almost all of this and even the parts I disagree with I agree in principle. There will never be someone who can reach level or power needed to actually do what you’re describing without being a very, very good liar. Because they are never reaching that position on merit and message alone. It’s not just republicans outnumbering us. It’s people who are indifferent outnumber republicans and democrats and progressives combined. And not performatively indifferent. I mean people who genuinely do not care and do not vote and never will vote no matter how bad their circumstances get. A rock bottom low enough to engage that many people can not exist in a world with drive thrus, cell phones, and air conditioning. There’s no way to make that many people uncomfortable enough to care without it already being too late.
I’d like to point out that Obama is responsible for the most amount of deportations in the history of this country. And he bombed more of the middle east that bush. He’s still one of the greatest presidents in our history, but…
Yeah, the same guy who killed two American citizens in Pakistan with no due process. The one that accepted a transparency award in a CLOSED meeting. The president that didn’t close gitmo. The one that expanded our wars to six countries. And remember how George Bush was spying on Americans by listening in on that fiber optic cable coming into the ATT center in California and how Obama stopped all of that? Oh, right he didn’t. In fact I believe it’s still going on. And Obama care, what a great idea. Force people to buy health insurance. What a great idea. So great the heritage foundation came up with it, you know the people who brought you Project 2025. People seem to think that just because he wasn’t Bush or Trump, he was great. I think they can all be shit.
And look where we are today. Our “president”pulling meme coin and fake smartphone rug pulls. Gas at $6+ a gallon and rising. Please snap out of it!!!
We don’t need a second Obama. We need a first of a new kind of president, one that manages to actually change things. Not a party line tower, not a middle of the roadster, but a daring and principled changer. The type of person we’d need would be fighting both parties, not just pissing the other one off. Because both parties right now are fubar and our future looks bleak.
The DNC took Bernie down…now AOC is the closest to what u describe.
We need her to step up. And we need to put the DNC as well as the GOP out to pasture.
Obama wasn’t perfect, but at least he wasn’t a trainwreck and he was sandwiched between two of them.
No, you don’t understand - if you can’t get a 110% perfect leftist president, you might as well just elect the next Trump to reinforce fascism!
She literally told you it is not about president, masters never changed. Now you understand?
Are you suggesting that, assuming magically Obama won president in 2025, things would be going exactly the same because “masters never changed”?
Same track, slower train
Suggesting that Obama-equivalent would threaten allies with military takeover of land, tariff literally everybody fucking up the global economy, start supporting the enemy and rolling out the red carpet for Putin, or attacking Iran for absolutely no reason… is just flat out delusional.
I am saying that I was disappointed long ago seeing my friends, colleagues and others getting fooled by politicians. At least their pink glasses were striped off. As the saying goes, it has to get really bad before we see changes. The only one right now who I am interested to watch is Mamdani, he seems pretty legit so far
Man ain’t that the damn truth. I’m so tired of that mindset that if the only tolerable option isn’t perfect, let the terrible option win. Just wtf.
I get that we want to have a better system, but if people let the side that is intent on non-rich people having zero say or rights, we will be worse off than the imperfect solution. Really need people to quit letting perfect be the enemy of good.
Try talking sense to some Green party boosters. They are almost as insular as the conservative sub on reddit.
They absolutely will not take responsibility for being the splitters who let Dubya win in 2000. They still think Jill Stein is an awesome choice for president and they still ignore congressional races.
They embody the idea of rejecting the positive because it isn’t perfect(in their eyes).
Yeah, all the ones I have run into have been pretty delusional in that regard. And no matter how you explain anything they just shove their heads in the sand and ignore reality. I would say that I hope one day ranked choice voting makes this a non issue. But I bet they mark only one option and leave off the others. It’s chess with pigeons.
It’s really the only other alternative.
Jon Stewart was pretty positive on Trump bombing Iran. He is not the guy.
Where did you see that?
I see you sending this to more than just me. Seeing this and your other posts, you’ve got an agenda of some kind. Stewart doesn’t condone the invasion at all in this, in fact he criticizes it.
Daily show made some jokes about it, and I have heard people alternatively claim that he is either pro Trump or pro Iran. People just looking for an excuse to hate Jon I guess
That’s kinda what I figured. Anyone claiming he’s pro trump either hasn’t seen him talk about anything or is severely misunderstanding his sarcasm and/or satire.
I suspect that the more strident you are politically, the less likely it is that you can understand satire and nuance.
Right, they are taking everything as a flat statement devoid of all other context. You can make damn near anything sound bad if you do that.
They are misunderstanding what they linked so hard though that it’s absolutely someone purposely mischaracterizing the entire material to push an agenda.
Bullshit.
Lol, no he wasn’t.
Source: See any of his shows.
Yeah…you’d have to be pretty dense to think that’s him condoning the war on Iran. He makes jokes about every leader. Just because you took offense to them doesn’t mean he’s supporting the war.
Jon Stewart pushed hard for ~$10 billion for roughly 90,000 9/11 responders/survivors — about $110,000 per person.
Using that same math for all 330 million Americans, - that’d be roughly $36 trillion (more than entire GDP).I dunno - something about that deal is, - feels a bit populist.
I support universal healthcare. That’s exactly why this bothers me. America refuses to build a rational universal system, but will absolutely create gold-plated exception systems for emotionally untouchable groups because the politics are driven by symbolism and emotion instead of coherent policy.
It should be noted that those people had significant health risks, far beyond the average American. This is basically masonry, likely including asbestos, where the survivors had no capacity for ppe, and many responders forwent it pursuing immediate life saving over waiting to try to get ppe that wasn’t readily available.
This is best thought of as disaster relief in the form of healthcare.
That’s my girl.
I have been thinking about the problem with politicians in general: they want to climb, they want positions of power and probably also money. But do they want to make policy even more? As in, for the people? Maybe in the beginning, but at some point, it seems, they all made a deal with the devil.
I hope what she said is an answer to such thoughts.
As a European this is how I read it too. Politics in the US are so driven by “team sport” and grand personalities the actual policy sometimes gets forgotten. “He says what I think” and “I’ve always voted for party X.” are very common arguments and you may occasionally hear about some wedge issue, but really understanding how these people would govern?
AOC has policy goals and fight for them regardless of her title. If she thinks she can there as President she will run, if not she will do something else.
Something like 75% of American voters want universal health care, 90% of Democrat voters want it, and over 50% of Independents.
(these are approximations there are many polls pick your favorite)
Unfortunately, in the USA it’s “donations” that control legislation, cash is king. Our reps have two choices… do what Americans want (healthcare, higher wages and benefits, less bombs), or do what makes them and their entire family filthy rich.
It’s hard to resist the allure of money, they won’t give it up willingly. Landing leadership positions means millions of dollars a year, cushy political appointments (like your husband/wife landing an abassadorship to Bermuda), and other fantastic benefits, it’s blatant.
Whenever polls regarding universal healthcare are discussed, I always add that that if you want to gauge how popular universal healthcare is in the US, you need to subtract the over age 65 respondents (which leads to it polling even more favorably). Why? Because despite being the age demographic most opposed to universal healthcare, that is the one demographic that already has universal healthcare. And it’s not because they think Medicare is bad - on the contrary, Medicare is very popular among seniors. They love it. They just think they deserve universal healthcare while everyone else just wants to mooch off the system. So frankly I don’t care what they think about universal healthcare, actions speak louder than words.
