With the Democratic primaries in full swing, the Waypoint Radio crew decided it would be a good time to sit down and flesh out their thoughts on the current candidates, and what has emerged from their campaigns so far. If you've listened to Waypoint Radio before, it's probably no surprise who we prefer, but we've taken the time to discuss their real and material differences. It's not just the individual campaign promises and potential policies, but what baggage they carry from the Democratic party's sketchy history in past elections, and where they're likely to cede ground in search being "reasonable." You can read an excerpt and listen to the full episode below.
When you guys brought up Biden, I immediately thought of the nightmare scenario where him and Trump spend the entire debate saying the other guy is more inappropriate with women. The very idea makes me want to be YEETED out of existence.
“ You don’t have to do this, Joe, you really don’t,” Obama told Biden earlier this year, according to a Times source, prior to the former senator jumping into the …
Like, for real, is Biden’s mental fitness 100%, or is he just that insulated from the general sentiment? His stubborn refusal to drop out, when the well is this poisoned, is totally irrational, to me.
Biden can still stick to a script just fine. I think it’s just a relative lack of mental stamina that bites him. The longer he’s on tour or debating or whatever, the more likely he is to snap at voters or say something incomprehensible (or racist…or both).
I think he hasn’t dropped out yet because he still technically has the numbers behind him. He’s winning South Carolina in every poll (for now?) and Iowa’s a coin toss between him and Bernie (last DMR poll ought to be out any minute now EDIT: DMR poll cancelled). If he wins Iowa and South Carolina, that’ll probably be enough for the Democratic big money to line up behind him and try and push him across the finish line.
Honestly, the fate of the world depends on what Iowa decides next week. God help us all.
I posted this on twitter, but I really want to thank y’all. Hearing you speak about the precariousness that capitalism places us all in made me really truly cry for the first time in a long time. Hearing Austin talk about the unfairness to people who work hard and Gita about the possibility of moving back in with parents and having to work retail really struck me because that’s where I am immediately after graduating. It feels hard being where I am, but it’s good to remember other people have felt and feel the same. Sorry if there’s typos here, I’m crying agian and it’s hard to see through it. Thank you, we’re gonna win, KR0 for game of the decade.
This probably just comes from having full time jobs and not diving down rabbit holes beyond what’s been reported in mainstream outlets, but the team vastly underestimates all the shady shit that exists in Warren’s backstory and the way she’s self styled a narrative to push the shadyness to the side. There’s the native American thing, to start. She should have known full well being Cherokee is a matter of being part of a tribe, not just blood (like, there’s an actual list of Cherokee members). And yet she allowed herself to be styled as “Harvard’s first woman of colour professor”. She allowed her career to benefit an unknown amount (because she won’t talk about it, admit to it, or as ever offered any kind of reparations) from a “family story” that she, at the very least, knew was probably fake decades before she was forced to publicly admit it. It’s the work of an amoral careerist.
Now, in the pod they also say “Warren never lied about being a Republican”. Well, sort of. While she’s owned up to being a Republican, she’s made it seem like she just didn’t care that much about politics at the time. She said she wasn’t “politically active”. In fact, one of her best friends in high school is on the record as saying she “always talked about politics” and was a “die hard conservative”. How can you be a registered member of party and not consider that as being “politically active”? This is the kind of stuff I’m talking about, where she slightly twists the truth to make it an easier pill to swallow.
Now we get to what is, in my mind, the truly heinous part of Senator Warren’s career: her decades of work as a corporate bankruptcy lawyer. We don’t know too much about this work, probably because a lot of it was really depraved. Warren will tell you that bankruptcy law “attempts to solve a situation that involves suffering for everyone involved”. That it “inevitably pits sympathetic interests against each other”. I think that’s bullshit. In one case, Warren worked for an insurer, Travelers, attempting to worm its way out of paying for Asbestos related law suits. With her help they did so successfully. In another case she represented “LTV Steel, which wanted to limit its payments to into a fund for miner’s health benefits”. In ANOTHER case she worked for Dow Corning to limit the liability of their parent company over ruptured silicon gel breast implants.
So, in conclusion, Elizabeth Warren is a liar with no path to the nomination, who at this point is only staying in the race to act as a spoiler for Bernie, who, if he fails to win in the first round at the convention, will see every other democrat backroom deal their delegates against his. Bernie or bust.
Can’t speak to most of the points in the comment, but I think challenging her history of political activity because “a friend” said she was active isn’t valid to me. We don’t know the friend’s motives, or if they’re being honest, or if they even remember correctly. I’m a registered Democrat, but I’m definitely not politically active in my opinion. And finally, I’d say I don’t frankly care much if she was a Republican in college. She’s 70. It’s been over 50 years since she was in highschool, and things are completely different politically.
Corporate bankruptcy lawyer I’m pretty eh on, and the Cherokee thing was obviously bad.
But your post is full of personal accusations with zero thought for her proposed policies, and that’s what I think we should be focused on more than personal attacks. You can find plenty interviews where people call Bernie a jerk, or say “nobody wants to work with him,” or question his personal wealth, etc. There’s dirt on every politician.
I guess I just really don’t like the vibe of listing a bunch of negative talking points about Warren, calling her a liar , and then the “Bernie or Bust.” I like Bernie. I think he’s gonna fucking win, and I’m gonna fucking vote for him. But I’m not gonna throw out Warren because of a few talking points.
Yeah, of course other politicians are going to say bad stuff about Bernie. Because they represent a corrupt establishment and he’s anathema to that. A close personal friend of Warren saying “she was like this when she was younger”, in a way that isn’t even derogatory in and of itself, is nothing like a right wing dem running their mouth off to preserve their party how they like it.
Seeing policy as the be all end all is a classic liberal mistake in politics. Almost all of Warren or Sander’s policies aren’t going to be able to be pass an obstructionary Republican branch of government anyway. We need someone who is going to fight no matter what. Why not judge someone by their character? That’s how you know how they’re going to act when the chips are down.
Laying out the negative talking points now is also really important, because if she’s the nom, or just Biden’s VP, what are we going to see all election cycle? Trump talking about all the stuff I just talked about. And he’ll be right, just like he was right about Hillary being a crook, and that’s why he’ll beat her.
So I enjoyed getting an episode even more centered on politics than normal and appreciated the window into everyone’s thinking on the current candidates, but I have to say it’s a bit of a bummer to see that casually homophobic language sails right on by without a murmur of dissent even here on Waypoint It’s really not that hard to talk about how bad something is without talking about how much dick it sucks.
Yeah, it sorta sucks that it is this way, but a lot of the undecided/unmotivated “moderates” that candidates are trying to sway couldn’t be bothered to care about policy, even if you literally paid them.
The politics of undecided voters are often totally fucking incomprehensible and they go where the charisma is
I’m glad someone else thought the same, because I thought I was going crazy when I went back earlier to check if there was some context I missed and couldn’t find her outburst again. I guess I either skipped over it or they quietly swapped out the mp3 to cut that exchange.
Rob’s point about local politics being a whole different ballgame was dead-on and also radiated intense Massachusetts energy. The mayor of my city opposes needle exchange programs, tried to block us from becoming a sanctuary city (city council overrode his veto), and basically sold out our entire downtown area to big business in an effort to gentrify it, all while claiming to be a Democrat. Because of his party identification, and because voter turnout here is miserable, whenever he’s up for reelection he wins easily. Don’t trust someone just because they have (D) next to their name, y’all.
Speaking from NJ here, marijuana legalization is held up now because of a Democratic Party machine dude named Steve Sweeney (who if per chance you’re reading this, go fuck yourself, Steve). There’s majorities in the state house and state senate, but a few corrupt Dems want a cut. It’s awful.
I have nothing new to add to the conversation, truth be told. They broke down the candidates and why Bernie is a pretty darn good candidate very well. The fact that the establishment does not like him one bit is a major plus in his favor.
I don’t put much stock in electoral politics, personally. I can still get caught up in the excitement and they do have the most immediate effect on people’s lives so I do volunteer to text every now and then and I do donate (all to Bernie). I vote as a means of damage control and do hope that Bernie is able to use this movement that built around him to give people the healthcare they need and that leads to them becoming more politically active.
That said, Bernie has the best, most enthusiastic supporters. This is an absolute gem from 2016:
It’s really not that hard to talk about how bad something is without talking about how much dick it sucks.
