It's selling out black people, but let me give y'all the magic words for winning elections in 2018 and 2020:
"now I don't go in for all that 'everyone's a racist' stuff. But these guys? They are racist. And that's not what America stands for."
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that's the center right now. disagreeing with Kaep's protest but disagreeing even more with Trump's condemnation of the protest.
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holding the line against charges of systemic racism but also defending against the resurgence of overt white supremacy...
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that's what the "mainstream" of America wants right now. And you can get through a Democratic primary on it.
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and at the end of the day, enough POC voters will fall in line that winning all the whites who "just want things to go back to normal"
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will carry elections for you. Throw in a dash of "if everybody's a racist, no one is"? Uncle Joe Biden will win two terms with that.
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"now this is... this is just craziness. This is craziness. We have got to get back to some normalcy and some decency in this country."
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and Uncle Joe's perfect because he will get away with it bc of all the times black folks saw him stare at Barack with hearts in his eyes.
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To be clear: this is not a liberatory politic. Far from it. The opposite of it, in fact. But is it the fastest road to political power? Yep.
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Uncle Joe could swoop in with 'bring back the public option as a last resort if there's no competition from the market'
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with a side of 'let people buy into Medicare at 55' and then some 'we've gotta get some money to these police departments for body cams'
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bring back Obama-era immigration policy, get a DREAM act signed (or path to citizenship but only to ppl who don't have felonies)
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and of course maintaining America's perpetual war machine bc duh. A little bit of Elizabeth Warren-ism on Wall Street regulation...
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(but probably not much legislation bc it will conveniently not be a priority until after he loses majority in one of the chambers)
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oh and maybe, MAYBE a bill to subsidize in-state tuition and perhaps even some student loan reform (that's a big maybe too).
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and of course it'll all come with pretty big Republican concessions but it'll get done. And American neoliberalism will continue.
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Or, we can take the risky road and elect someone on a more ambitious platform that will actually lead towards liberation.
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But I don't even see any Dems with liberatory politics on offer, Bernie included, let alone a plan for future challenges.
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So we'll probably get a neolib in 2020, or maybe a social democrat with milquetoast antiracism who genuflects to socialism.
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But a president with a real, functional, active antiracism? We haven't done the foreground work yet. We barely have antiracist mayors...
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much less the antiracist state legislators and governors we need to pioneer and test and build out antiracist policy.
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The one thing we might get from Uncle Joe, if we pushed hard, is basically a Civil Rights Act of 2021.
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Which would address mass incarceration, police brutality, fix the gaping holes in the VRA, fight gerrymandering and voter suppression...
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maaaaaaaaaaaybe some fair housing stuff? But very little that will empower black folks. And even that would be VERY politically risky.
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If Obama came out in favor of it, Uncle Joe would basically have no chance. Can't break from your beloved 1st black prez on civil rights.
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but real stuff like fighting felon disenfranchisement, not allowing states to count non-voting felon population...? I don't see it happening
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But idk maybe I'm being too pessimistic. I do think a Civil Rights Act of 2021 is a feasible goal, if we pushed hard.
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but I don't see how we're gonna make the kind of real progress we need to make on the biggest issues. It'll be all incrementalism for 8 yrs.
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