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Super Tuesday open thread

Joe Biden: Does anyone really think this weirdo dingus can beat Trump

By David Futrelle

Big day. Big big day. Lots of shit going on. Discuss.

Also: VOTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!

I mean, if you’re in the US. If you’re not in the US, I guess don’t vote, unless maybe you’re a citizen abroad but I don’t know how the mechanics of that work exactly.

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Perry
Perry
4 years ago

@ Specialfrog

@Perry: No one has ever said that Warren would end institutional misogyny just by being elected president.

I know, and I didn’t respond as if anyone did. Having representation in government doesn’t end all bigotry experienced by said group, but it does matter. That’s why I was clear in saying that all things equal, I would support a candidate that shares identity with an underrepresented group over their counterpart. But if all things aren’t equal, and the candidate with the ingroup identity shares my politics more closely while proposing institutional changes that will benefit that underrepresented group then my choice is clear. For me, who you fight for/how you fight for them matters more than who you are.

@Axecalibur

First of all, hot take, “professional managerial class” isn’t a real thing. It’s regressive social politics dogwhistling disguised as leftist scholarship

2nd of all, apparently, Warren extremely is/cues and signals pmc. How so? I keep seeing this trope, and, for the fuckin life of me, can’t find a explanation that doesn’t, if ya dig hard enough, lead down to Chapo or some such ranting about identity politics *hissboohiss*

How many episodes of Chapo have you listened to? Rejecting liberal identity politics isn’t the same as rejecting leftist intersectionality. I know the Reddit sub in particular gets interpreted pretty wildly. On the one hand we have actual left reactionaries and Nazbols calling us liberals because we give a fuck about identity based-oppression, and on the other hand we have liberals calling us Nazbols because we still center class-based analysis. Here’s the synthesis: You can look at class conflict as the foundational conflict of humanity while still recognizes that other conflicts exist and interact with class. There are leftists who don’t believe this, they’re just dumbasses I we get push back against in between shitting on Nazis.

One thing I’m curious about though — you talk about searching for an explanation of PMC that doesn’t involve class reductionism (which is apparently Chapo). Where have you learned about the concept? Because I’m definitely not an expert, but from my understanding, delineating a professional managerial class doesn’t imply class reductionism at all. Are you saying the scholarship isn’t genuine because it’s unsound conceptually, because you haven’t engaged with it, or because you disagree with leftist politics and therefore discount all of our scholarship?

This right here, just so ya know, is one of the least feminist things people say without realizing it. It’s also one of the hardest mindsets to dislodge from someone. Everybody’s (at least a lil) sexist. Anyone who says they aren’t, or that the implication is “unconscionable” even, is either a grifter or… we’ll go with overconfident and undercritical

I do know, and I should have been more clear. Sexism codes everything in society, but there are levels to it. Everyone on this site is a least a little bit sexist as well, but if someone came to you and asserted that there’s a problem with antifeminist toxicity here, most people would probably be very confused, and want more explanation. That’s what I was trying to get across. I’ve had a lot of people pull a sort of Mott and Bailey on me — call me a Bernie Bro and accuse our movement of being infected with misogyny, and when I ask for further explanation and examples that set us apart, I’m told some variation of “you realize everyone’s a little sexist, right?” The implication I’m always left with is that the only thing I can do to be a good feminist is stop being a leftist as well.

Or… just don’t ?

That’s always an option, sure. But I used to lurk here a lot when I was younger and liked it a lot, and now that I just started reading again and (being significantly more confident, as well as way more radical) kinda just wanna talk to people. Full disclosure, most of the online community I actively participate in now is pretty hardcore left, so I’m not the most socially experienced in this environment, but when I disagree I’ll try to be as respectful as I can.

Perry
Perry
4 years ago

@WWTH

Crimes? Are you fucking kidding me?

I mean, yeah. I don’t know how OP meant it, but pretty much everyone with any power in the US government is a criminal in my eyes. Including Sanders for that matter (Afghanistan vote), the difference being that he’s still relatively very good and has genuinely transformed his behavior on foreign policy since then. Compared to him, Warren has always been much more of a hawk and shows no signs of changing. And compared to her, the majority of Congresspeople are absolute monsters. Sliding scale of severity.

I do always love how half the Sanders base denies that there’s an issue with toxicity, but the other does some version of “she had it coming.” It’s very reminiscent of gamergate.

An incredibly diverse group of populists campaigning to reform the government so everyone can have healthcare, educational opportunities, decent wages and workers’ protections, hopefully not die in climate catastrophe, etc. is reminiscent of a bunch of gamers on the internet harrassing women and because they didn’t want them in their video games? This feels incredibly unfair and reductionist.

If you want me to say that some Bernie supporters are assholes, I will. If you want me to say that our anger is unjustified like GG, that our goals are frivolous like GG, that we (as a group, more than any other campaign or liberal movement) punch down, then I have to disagree.

But if she didn’t have the plans, she would be pummeled for that too.

She would, but that’s literally what’s happened to Bernie this entire election cycle, whereas she also got a lot of praise for “having a plan for that”. All of the candidates got shit on and all of them got praised. Joe Biden gets shit on all time, I just don’t particularly care because he deserves it. It’s honestly really hard for me to compare the candidates on a gender basis in terms of treatment when they (the three in question) are all so different in terms of policy and messaging, and those differences work as confounding factors.

Most all of the criticism and praise going towards the candidates has depended on the politics of the person sending it. Obviously, corporate media has its own politics though, so the feedback most people hear is incredibly slanted. I actually feel like Elizabeth Warren has gotten a lot of positive mainstream coverage, from what I’ve seen, but I guess I’m curious to see how it would have changed if she were a man.

Revolution sounds nice in theory, but revolutions are violent, disruptive and rarely succeed. A revolution will kill a lot of the people that the left, at least in theory are fighting for.

I feel like Bernie’s messaging — identifying as a socialist, calling for political revolution — and his not insignificant amount of genuinely radical supporters cause people to forget that at the end of the day he’s still a liberal. He’s not calling for actual revolution, or for workers to own the means of production. He’s just calling for social democracy, which isn’t incrementialism either, but rather for the US to start resembling literally the entire rest of the Global North. It won’t solve all of our problems, not even close, but it’s a start. For me, and for a lot of people, this is already a concession. He is the compromise candidate.

Alan Robertshaw
Alan Robertshaw
4 years ago

@ hambeast

I very much see the strength in your case; I guess VP can often be a bit of a thumb twiddling sinecure.

I guess in a way I’m being selfish. There’s a bit of a surfeit of right wing populist leaders right now. From a purely foreign policy perspective it would be nice to have someone around who’s less of an isolationist and understands that the international community is just so co-dependant now.

And there’s also that ‘one heartbeat away from the presidency’ thing. Warren is the only person I would want waiting in the wings.

Viscaria
Viscaria
4 years ago

@Psiana

Revolutions are only happening when people get really desperate. Social democratic reforms are a way to prevent that from happening, just like FDRs reforms could.

So this is how I read what you’ve said. If I have misinterpreted, I apologize, and I’d love if you can clarify. I read this as, “Given the choice between 1) letting capitalism run fully unrestrained so that enough people suffer so badly under it that they will be desperate and want revolution and 2) trying to improve people’s lives in smaller ways, option 1) is better.” I strongly disagree. To me, this shows a willingness to sacrifice the most vulnerable people in the name of revolution.

There are already people, including many children torn away from their parents, in concentration camps. There are already people not getting the healthcare that they desperately need because of the cost of healthcare in the United States. I believe we should help those people as much as we can, however we can, not just let them suffer and die and then use their deaths as talking points.

@Surplus, the least loud and annoying way to send amber alerts to people’s phones would be not to send them at all. No one is delighted when their phone starts blaring at them in the middle of the night, whether they are outside of their home or currently moving or whatever else. However, the various provincial governments in Canada have decided that the irritation to their residents is appropriate when balanced against the increased potential to locate an abandoned child as soon as possible by contacting everyone immediately. I agree with them.

Psiana
Psiana
4 years ago

@Viscaria

I absolutely don’t think that capitalism should run fully unrestrained. I agree that we should do whatever possible to improve the system for marginalized people.
My intention was to say that most leftists actually want improvements in a capitalist system even if this decreases the chance that a revolution happens, since most leftists support Bernie and his social democratic policies. It’s also very likely that i or people i know would die if a revolution happens.
I guess i should have clarified my standpoint.

Naglfar
Naglfar
4 years ago

@Viscaria
I can’t clarify what Psiana said because I don’t know exactly what they were thinking, but I interpreted them differently. I thought they were saying that the reforms were good because they prevented people from getting desperate, which is bad. I could be misreading and you could be right, but that’s what I thought they were saying.

the least loud and annoying way to send amber alerts to people’s phones would be not to send them at all.

I know you can disable AMBER alerts on iPhones (and probably android too, but I don’t have as much experience). On iPhones it can be disabled in settings or is automatically muted if your phone is on Do Not Disturb.

ETA: Psiana clarified while I was writing and I didn’t notice until after posting. It sounds like I interpreted correctly, but my apologies if I was wrong.

Viscaria
Viscaria
4 years ago

@Psiana (and Naglfar too)

Thank you. I think the miscommunication was an issue on the receiving end (me) rather than because you weren’t clear enough, so I apologize. I hope things improve for you and the people in your country and my country and all the countries.

Axecalibur: Middle Name Danger
Axecalibur: Middle Name Danger
4 years ago

@Lesley

It also definitely originated in bonafide Leftist circles

Oh, sure. Wasn’t claiming the dirtbags invented the term last month. Just that I find it’s use… odd. Like how virtue signalling is a real thing that people do. But it’s also not a real thing, and fuckfaces use it as a politically correct way of calling someone a ‘n*****r lover’. I mean, if ‘the right’ (and their shitty enablers across the spectrum) didn’t coopt ‘leftist’ language for their bullshit, they’d only communicate in angry grunts at this point

@Perry

How many episodes of Chapo have you listened to?

0, and plan to keep it that way

you talk about searching for an explanation of PMC that doesn’t involve class reductionism

Oh no, it’s not hard to come by an explanation of PMC that isn’t gross. It’s not that deep a concept. The issue is finding how Elizabeth Warren personally was the candidate of the PMC specifically and why… whatever it is she’s doing in that vein is particularly bad. I’ve not gotten a good answer to ^that. But, hey, maybe I’m only hearing the dinguses

Are you saying the scholarship isn’t genuine because it’s unsound conceptually, because you haven’t engaged with it, or because you disagree with leftist politics and therefore discount all of our scholarship?

Neither. I think this kind of class analysis has some problems. Not to the level conceptually unsound, that’s a bit much, but problems nonetheless. Now, I do disagree with ‘leftist’ politics, but discounting all of an ideological bent’s scholarship is only something I do with nazis and their ilk. And, again, not that deep a concept, not sure what all i’m meant to engage with

call me a Bernie Bro and accuse our movement of being infected with misogyny

I don’t think you’re a BernieBro. 1stly, cos that’s not a term I endorse, mostly for feministy reasons (SandersStan is better). And 2ndly, while I obvs think you’re wrong on a lotta things, you’re not being that much of a shit imo. A lil… passionate, but whatever

The movement is infected with misogyny tho 😛

when I disagree I’ll try to be as respectful as I can

Happens

He is the compromise candidate

Now, on that we agree

Naglfar
Naglfar
4 years ago

I know what PMC is, but am I the only one who thinks of Tipper Gore and the PMRC when I see it mentioned?

Ooglyboggles
4 years ago
Hippodameia
Hippodameia
4 years ago

I once read a fundagelical Prodestant’s account of getting a Catholic to convert. It was worth lots of gold stars because the Catholic who converted was almost doing it right. The convert just needed to take that last step into the bliss of ideological purity.

Funny how similar the vibe of this thread is . . .

Naglfar
Naglfar
4 years ago

@Ooglyboggles
Yup, some idiot brought a swastika flag to a Sanders rally. Not sure if it’s because they want to compare him to a Nazi or because he’s Jewish, but either way it’s highly antisemitic and assholish.

Ooglyboggles
4 years ago

@Naglfar
And The Hill decides to have Sanders have his hand out in what can be construed as a Nazi Salute -_-

Plus that title, pure disingenuous bs.

On good news it seems that Sanders supporters snatched the flag away.

https://twitter.com/ladawn/status/1235781196115849216

And in other news people found the name and place of the guy, apparently that nazi has a history of disrupting leftist events and mosques.

An Impish Pepper
An Impish Pepper
4 years ago

Explaining how leftists feel about Warren doesn’t exactly look great as a response to charges of sexism in the left. I absolutely agree with WWTH that if Warren and Sanders swapped genders, they’d be closer in popularity, or perhaps Warren would be the one leading and Sanders dropping out. I think a lot of people get caught up in ideology and miss the fact that people generally don’t think along hard ideological lines. Biases due to various axes of oppression, including gender, are very real and consequential. It makes me wonder, as much as I would have preferred someone else, like maybe from “the Squad”, for the left to rally around (I know, age limit, lack of relative experience, etc. but still), I also have to deal with the fact that, if this is the Democrats’ overall reaction to an old grumpy-sounding white-passing man, it would only be worse if it were someone not fitting that description.

For me, the comparison to GamerGate was a clear sign to back off on any desire I may have to argue about this stuff here. That’s just beyond the point where I think this can be hashed out through continued discussion. I think a lot of us are mourning a little here, not just for Warren dropping out, but also due to Biden being very likely to be the nominee at this point. On top of that is a progressively more openly authoritarian party that will respond to losing by at least impeaching the president immediately. Who the hell even knows at this point what a Democratic president actually needs to do in order to accomplish anything?

Perry
Perry
4 years ago

@Axecalibur

Oh no, it’s not hard to come by an explanation of PMC that isn’t gross. It’s not that deep a concept. The issue is finding how Elizabeth Warren personally was the candidate of the PMC specifically and why… whatever it is she’s doing in that vein is particularly bad. I’ve not gotten a good answer to ^that. But, hey, maybe I’m only hearing the dinguses

The professional managerial class can be described as buffer between the capitalist class and the working class, used by the former to control the latter. For example, social workers and managers. These people hold an elevated status over those with more traditionally blue-collar jobs, which means that although they don’t share power of the capitalist class, they have a stake in maintaining the hierarchy. Two things that seem to get overlooked when discussing the PMC is that 1) it’s structural rather than individual, and everything structural in our society is ultimately under the control of the capitalist class. What I mean by this is it’s not an individual’s choice to be in the PMC, it’s just the way it was set up and they can either except it or fight against it. The field of social work, for example, has long been weaponized against poor people as a means of control, going back to the first Friendly Visitors, but that doesn’t mean every social worker is a villain. 2) Just because they have an elevated social status doesn’t mean they have material wealth. Especially nowadays, as wealth inequality increases, the middle shrinks. College professors and instructors are good examples of professionals who get treated and paid like absolute shit.

TLDR: The PMC is a tool of the capitalist class to maintain capitalism by keeping the working class inline. This is not the fault of members of the PMC and class solidarity between both lower classes is totally possible.

So Elizabeth Warren is the candidate of the PMC literally just because that’s her base. This is not a bad thing in a vacuum, but what it means electorally is that it’s a lot harder for her to build a broad, diverse working class base, which is kind of necessary if you want to be a successful left populist. But, accordingly with her supporters, her messaging very much signals a desire for top down reforms in which experts gather together and fight the good fight. She’s simply not a demagogue, and if you have my politics, you want to empower the people as much as possible.

(https://www.vox.com/2020/3/3/21162527/what-happened-to-elizabeth-warren)

weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee

If you want me to say that some Bernie supporters are assholes, I will. If you want me to say that our anger is unjustified like GG, that our goals are frivolous like GG, that we (as a group, more than any other campaign or liberal movement) punch down, then I have to disagree.

I made the comparison because the tactics are identical. Not because the ideology is. But I’m not talking about being an asshole. I’m talking about rape threats, death threats, doxxing, coordinated pile ons. That is, harassment. Enough people have reported having this happen to them that I can’t dismiss it as outliers, or the targets lying or exaggerating. Maybe the GG comparison feels unfair, but when the rhetoric is so similar, it’s alarming.

I don’t bring this stuff up because I want Sanders to fail, or I hate poor people, or I’m a PMC or whatever. I want the left to succeed and this kind of shit doesn’t help. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to fix an issue that’s driving potential supporters away if you genuinely want Bernie to win and then be effective when he’s President.

Axecalibur: Middle Name Danger
Axecalibur: Middle Name Danger
4 years ago

@Oogly
Can’t wait for someone to spray paint a swastika on the white house lawn if and when (fingers crossed) he becomes ousts Trump, and be swamped in headlines like ‘President Sanders linked to nazi art’ -_-

@Perry

if you have my politics, you want to empower the people as much as possible

Skimmed that article, and just… ‘the people’ were a mistake, yeet em into the sun. Fuck all y’all. Or, the white ones anyway

Ooglyboggles
4 years ago

@Axecalibur: Middle Name Danger

Got to make the one Jewish Candidate out to be the “Bad Jew:tm:”

And oh great on top of antisemitism, they’re just going out and whitesplaining to Nina Turner.

https://twitter.com/thedailyangle/status/1235760412735541248

Can they hear themselves speak?!

weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee

That “angry black woman” comment was just

comment image

Perry
Perry
4 years ago

@WWTH

Genuine question — what is the mechanism for assessing the epidemic of rape threats, death threats, harrassment? To be honest, rape threats are the only thing in that list need no further explanation, but something like harrassment is actually pretty vague. For example, doxxing someone is not the same as sending them 20 rat emojis on Twitter, still they they can both be reasonably classified as harrassment. Who are the people receiving them? Harassing a random person who makes good faith criticism, harassing a powerful politician or media figures who propagandize, and harassing another regular person who harasses you are also all different.

Also what is meant by these things “have been reported”? Is it just word of mouth? That’s part of the reason why I don’t know what to do or how to fix this, I’ve literally never seen this happen, but keep having people tell me it’s right under my nose.
It’s really difficult to be helped to succeed when the conversation jumps from “emojis piss me off” to “there’s an unspecified but critical amount of rapists and predators online that also want single payer, spend x amount of time rooting them out before we can fight for these policy issues”, and the people who spearheaded the accusations against us in 2016 had material interest in our policy goals not succeeding.

Politics aren’t defined by rhetoric, it’s defined by life and death policy consequences in a way that anything in the video game community is not. GG rhetoric is alarming to me as well, but even more alarming for me, is the outpouring of material human suffering that will continue if Biden gets the nominee. There was never any way for that comparison to be applicable enough to be helpful.

Makroth
Makroth
4 years ago

I wanna see someone make a list of death and rape threats received from Bernie Bros. See how many there are.

weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee

I don’t have one master list. It’s been a drip, drip, drip of people talking about receiving threats over the years. Anyone who follows the social media of any progressive woman who isn’t on the Bernie train will be familiar. I’m honestly shocked that people are acting like this is brand new information or need a list to be convinced.

And by the way, I was ready to move on from this because even after all the toxic shit I’ve seen from this particular segment of Bernie supporters, I still definitely want him to win over Biden.

But people keep doubling down, dismissing the issue, denying it happens. So I keep responding.

I’m truly disgusted that on a feminist site, we’re doing this. It’s feminism 101 that just because people belong to a group you identify with, doesn’t mean harassment allegations are false.

That’s part of the reason why I don’t know what to do or how to fix this, I’ve literally never seen this happen, but keep having people tell me it’s right under my nose.

I mean, really? Just because you haven’t personally seen harassment, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. You could try just believing people who say they’ve been harassed.

Naglfar
Naglfar
4 years ago

@WWTH
The thing is, now that Warren is out Bernie is my next choice, and one would think that if Bernie fans were being smart they’d stop harassing a group of people who otherwise would be likely to support their candidate. Instead they’re both insulting us and expecting that that will make us join them. Not how that works. I’ll vote for Bernie if he gets the nomination, but my opinion of him has been tarnished by the harassment.

One tweet I liked was Gwen Snyder’s response in which she acknowledged the harassment and offered to rebut any examples that people showed her.

Allandrel
Allandrel
4 years ago

@WWTH

I’m not arguing that incrementalism is preferable to larger, more radical reforms. I’m arguing that when the choice is incremental change or nothing, the former is preferable.

This is my view as well. I describe as “Go for what you want, but take what you can get. Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.”

Over and over I see self-described radicals reject any improvement to an issue on the grounds that it is not a complete, instant solution to the issue, with the result that nothing improves, such as rejecting legislation that would get millions more people health coverage because it doesn’t get everybody health coverage. The result is that nothing gets passed, and the radicals get to feel righteous while the people that they claim to be helping go bankrupt or die.

Interestingly, enough, you can find this mentality a lot with right-wingers as well, notably the “pro-life” movement. Show them a policy that is proven to reduce abortions, and one of the common rejections is “I don’t want to reduce abortions, I want to eliminate abortions.” (Which of course they can’t, but that doesn’t matter because the pro-life movement’s goal is not actually stopping abortions but punishing and controlling women, though I expect I’m preaching to the choir on this subject.)

Related to this is the other big issue I tend to have with ideologies claimed as radical, what I call the Single Axis of Oppression. You see this a lot with radfems and sexism, or Marxists and class. There is a single Axis of Opression that is the ONLY bad thing in the world, and thus the ONLY thing that must be opposed. Other forms of oppression either do not exist, which means that efforts made to combat them at taking away from the True Struggle, and so must themselves be opposed, or those other oppressions are actually symptoms of the One True Oppression and will go away once it is defeated… which means that efforts made to combat them are taking away from the True Struggle, and so themselves must be opposed.

(Consider, for example, how the “feminism” of TERFs seems to consist entirely of attacking trans women, and their hostility towards an questions of intersectionality.)

Naglfar
Naglfar
4 years ago

@Allandrel

The result is that nothing gets passed, and the radicals get to feel righteous while the people that they claim to be helping go bankrupt or die.

And this is my issue with a lot of radicals. I may agree with some on some things, but the dealbreaker is their inability to compromise or accept what they can get. It’s better to solve some problems, or solve things partway, then to get nothing solved. Many people (myself included) are at substantial risk if Trump is re-elected, and even though Biden is by no means good, it would avert much of the risk.

The single axis of oppression in some cases seems to serve another purpose: it allows people to pivot discussions back to their own people. When they reduce everything to class and avoid talking about the impact of race, gender, disability, etc., it’s a way to go back to talking about abled cishet white dudes rather than having to listen to minority voices. For example, a fellow called Dengler talking about Tulsi Gabbard in this thread repeatedly tried to swing away from discussion of racism or sexism by harping on the fact that poor white people exist.