I think it’s pretty evil to campaign strongly on enshrining women’s reproductive rights into law and then abandon them the moment you step into office.

One week he was leading a stadium full of people in “Yes we can!” chants saying Roe will be the law of the land, and the next week he was saying ‘not a priority’.

Lesser evil, definitely, but still quite evil.

Anyone suggesting that the US is too sexist to elect a woman president has to explain the election of Claudia Sheinbaum.

By every metric I can find, Mexico is more misogynistic than the US. You can look at crime statistics on domestic violence, rape, murder; or opinion surveys showing men’s negative attitude toward women – all the stats coming out of Mexico are worse.

Yet somehow, Mexico overwhelmingly elected a woman (a Jewish woman in an 85% Christian population, too).

My hypothesis is that policy matters much more than the gender of a candidate. Kamala had absolutely pathetic policy proposals, supporting the status quo of corporate economic domination and a foreign policy soaked in innocent blood. but maybe I’m biased.

Would the GOP be extremely progressive in Iran?

I would suspect if the GOP was in Iran they would want to dismantle much of the State Welfare Organization which provides universal health insurance, including mental health and addiction treatment.

And even if we focus on Iran’s horrific, regressive LGBT policies, are you so confident that the majority of the GOP disagrees? The current Overton window does not allow Republicans to openly propose making gay marriage or being trans illegal, but it’s safe to say that’s what many of them want. It’s practically written in Project 2025.

And on foreign policy, the GOP would never stand for Iran’s cautious de-escalatory approach. When Israel attacks, the GOP would be braying for bloody revenge.

I don’t claim to be an Iran expert, but I feel like the GOP would be center right.

“invited” is questionable, I know my governor was pressured and put under duress in order to accept Trump’s national guard deployment during George Floyd.

But what about a clearer example: President Eisenhower deployed National Guard troops to Arkansas to enforce the desegregation of schools. The national guard was explicitly not invited by the Governor of Arkansas. Was this a civil war?

The front lines of the Ukraine war are well defined. You can see them on a map.

So it was a civil war when National Guard troops were deployed in an attempt to quell the George Floyd uprising?

In the 60s we had everything you just said: extreme state sanctioned violence, mass shootings, national guard being sent in, judges houses being burned, many political assassinations…

And they all happened in much larger numbers. There were so many bombings and bomb threats, and tons of plane hijackings, and the overall crime rate was so much higher, and there was so much racial violence, and and…

So do you think the US went through a civil war in the 60s?

I agree that things are looking bad, and getting worse, and this may end up in some sort of a civil war. But it seems you and I have a much different definition of “civil war”.

Well I agree that is a bad move; it’s authoritarian, violent, expensive, unnecessary, and most likely unconstitutional.

But does sending National Guard troops to another state constitute a civil war?

You’re right, saying things like “front lines” is an oversimplification. I have listened to a lot of Robert Evans, and I agree that if a civil war happens it will Balkanize America.

With that being said, you agree none of this is happening yet? Surely we are backsliding into fascism and violence, but you would agree we are not in a civil war, because we do not yet have multiple different factions, upstart states, militias and insurgencies?

So what are the 21st century metrics for a war?

If this is a civil war, then what are the two sides? Where are the front lines?

Michelle Obama only polls well because of name recognition, she’s essentially a non-political figure.

What’s her position on the genocide in Gaza? What’s her take on universal healthcare? What’s her plan for Ukraine? Would she fight for gun control? Etc etc…

Right now, people can imprint their personal beliefs onto Michelle. If she would run, she would have to clarify all of her political positions, and then her poll numbers would naturally drop.

Ezra Klein, a man who’s entire career is based upon normalizing the decline of liberalism, a champion of normalizing the genocide in Gaza, is now going to lecture us all about normalizing fascism.

We should celebrate the win for sure! But calling it “spine growth” is delusional, wishful thinking.

Sadly I think the Biden case is very relevant to this story.

Democrats hid President Biden away for months, but they couldn’t hide his disasterous “I defeated Medicare” debate performance. Do you remember what it was like in the months after that? I remember being so anxious watching Biden public appearances, hoping he doesn’t make a fool of himself. And then when he inevitably flubbed, I remember feeling such deep dread, thinking “oh God, Trump is going to be president again”.

As the Republicans begin to give Trump the “Weekend at Bernie’s” treatment, Democratic criticism will not land as hard because we have so much footage of Dems standing behind Biden during his serious cognitive decline.

Prepare yourself for “it’s just a stutter”-type memes.

principled men

Sadly one of Biden’s principles was blindly supporting Israel no matter what they do, even through an ongoing genocide.

No, we should strive for a candidate who is against all genocide. Let’s not compromise in advance.

And when Kamala had the entire DNC establishment behind her, what was stopping her from distancing herself from Biden? What was she afraid of?

Even if Biden came out to publically criticize Kamala, that would have mixed results at best. A large chunk of Kamala’s base was still thinking about how Biden’s brain malfunctioned at the debate, another chunk was calling him Genocide Joe.

She chose to stick with Biden’s legacy instead of developing her own policy platform for the American people, and it directly gave us President Trump.

because they support the existence of Israel they have blood on their hands?

Yes.

If “Zionist” means anything at all, it means support for Israel as it currently exists. This means support for Jewish supremacy, support for bombing campaigns against civilians in multiple nations, and support for a literal ongoing genocide. Anyone who lends support to these evils has blood on their hands.

You can try to move goalposts to say Zionist only means “israel has a right to exist”, but this is meaningless in context. I personally believe in a one-state solution where Palestinians have equal rights with Jews; a state where there is no apartheid, ethnic cleansing, nor aggression against neighboring countries. I would be fine with this hypothetical country keeping the name “Israel”. Does this make me a Zionist too? If so, the term is meaningless.

I never mentioned their faith, why are you deciding what it is?

You are right about this, I should have been more clear with my words. I was describing a hypothetical Christian Zionist, not your specific neighbor who might be Jewish, Muslim, or atheist. Whatever their faith may be, I condemn their Zionism.