gotta say, i thought the reborn site was pretty sus, but i’m reading some really thoughtful and inspired posts over the last hours. good shit dudes.

really thoughtful/provoking posts tn

damn why didn’t obama or pelosi or reid or schumer try that?

not obviously. bernie wouldn’t have had the party apparatus behind him; wouldn’t have had the media; and would face an additional challenger-goofus like bloomberg running third party and stealing his votes.

but he did have the policies fitting the historical moment; he’s likable to normal people; and he would’ve had huge mobilization.

but a world where bernie wins the primary is a different world than ours; and one more conducive to his taking the presidency, obviously.

i think i’d dispute matt’s initial conclusion: that the increased turnout in this election, and the dems poor showing, means that everyone is (now?) only operating on this psychic non-material political level. that could be true in this case, but it seems to me that that’s only true precisely because biden and co didn’t really, substantially offer anything material. what was for sale from the dems was not material relief, nor an inspiring vision, but simply variation on Trump bad/civility good. or, as matt says, don’t be an asshole.

that this result (that increased turnout by itself didn’t bring about a governable victory for the “left”) occurred is notable, but it doesn’t deflate our (at least mine and formerly Matt’s) presumption that increased turnout with material rhetoric is a winning electoral strategy. certainly having that situation obtain has eluded us – but, to the degree we’re looking for wins by election, “getting bigger” seems to be the correct way forward.

edit: scribbled this mid listen. his point is more subtle: that we could imagine that a natural distribution of potential voters, ordered by their propensity to vote; that the availability of mail in balloting increased the number of voters at the margin; these new voters are, necessarily, at the lower end of propensity to vote; people who have a lower propensity to vote are, likely, less interested in notions/concepts like the civic good or society (otherwise they would’ve been engaged in voting); thus, we shouldn’t be surprised that these new marginal voters didn’t break for Biden – they’re more disposed to this psychic, don’t be a pussy shit. pretty thoughtful.

but again, that doesn’t mean that in the counterfactual case, where the dem candidate offered something substantial, that “new” voters wouldn’t be compelled to vote inline with their material, rather than their psychic interests. this only suggests that where voters don’t have skin in the game, increasing voting at the margin doesn’t necessarily suggest gains for the “left.”’

edit2: this is just a running journal now. matt makes good point RE capitalist realism deflating potential voters beliefs RE promises of material change. still not deflating my conviction that our role is to open up that rhetorical/intellectual space (against CR). but obviously we can only work with candidates which would make good on the peoples trust for substantial, substantive change (or they will, understandably, be more snakebit).

really makes you reflect on, among other things, how fucking stupid those people are.

don’t wanna dox myself, but i just gotta say: i’m an assman

i guess it hasn’t really occurred to me the way the “intellectual” underpinnings of the post-trump right have developed/unfolded. def pretty funny that their self styled political vanguard were made redundant by nonce conspiracists. no need for any intellectual foundation for those idiots, nothing deeper required than riffing on the pizza-gate loons.

a logical result really, and yet, i really bought into political landscape that seemed to be coalescing with the bannon boys back then. do ya’ll have a good theory about how they pivoted? i suppose trump never really embrace the alt-right’s ideological project (classic republican talking points like law & order and no socialism and political corruption replacing the fear mongering about the migrant trains following 2018) – easier to build a coalition against social obligation/ idpol than one premised on an ethnostate.

the world is like this perfectly curated metaphor which just so happens to endorse my world-view okay, but the world isn’t like that metaphor oh, uh, yes it is

fred armisen is white