i'm curious about the "put pressure on the presumptive nominee to go left" gambit that's always talked about. anyone who lived through obama campaign+presidency should know well that campaign promises don't mean a shit in hell. even more so if they're extracted unwillingly

so where did this idea come from and how did it get enshrined as "common wisdom". is it more electorate psychology to impart the illusion that anything we do makes a difference

like the idea that you can just pressure Biden to go left on health insurance policy and expect him to stay there and commit actionably to it as president is so ridiculous to me i wonder if EVERYONE has dementia

i think this is part of the West Wing "hallway patter" faux-wonk idea of "how the sausage is made" that some lifelong staffers perpetuated as true and it caught on as having the ring of truthiness to people who haven't had their ideals razed to the ground yet

it depends on the very iffy assumption that politicians take seriously their role as conduits of their constituents goals, needs, and desires, empty vessels for enacting the change that foments up from outside of themselves

getting biden to be sanders-like on social safety net stuff is about as likely as convincing YOU to go rightward and give private corporations more public assets to play with

and I think outlets like CNN are the ones perpetuating the so-called seriousness and importance and "purity" of looking at candidates solely based on their policy statements on their websites. you do realize they can say whatever they want and it doesn't matter, right

as far as I can tell, the ONLY thing that matters is not what anyone says, but how they've acted in the past

everything else is designed to distract you and keep you on the drip feed

the toxic curse of 24-hour news outlets is their vested interest in portraying politics as a daily riveting series of intrigues, shifting alliances, ideological chess moves with payoffs. this isn't russian literature; these are all simple people whose records tell simple stories

the most privileged and educated fall into the trap of the soap opera dynamics that are conjured out of thin air. the least privileged among us have no such illusions or fancies, and appear disengaged as a result

you can find out very easily that it's OK to discount someone's opinion if they can go on and on about what X said and what Y said in response and said, said, said, but cannot tell you any details about any of these people's voting records or where their money is coming from etc.

the entire political & media discourse is the classic magician's trick of talking to you, priming you, and distracting you with a sludgepile of rapid-fire words and ideas to hide the real nature of the game (very little is changing from week to week, the outcomes are inevitable)

consider the obvious-when-you-see-it sleight of hand, for example, that there's no spirited opposition to Trump because all involved in the two-party oppositional game have accepted he will win & are more or less comfortable with him being in power as long as their needs are met

if politicians can be publicly opposed to Trump without doing anything tangibly opposing Trump, and the gravy train is rolling in, where's the problem from their perspective?

from this angle, it makes perfect sense that someone looking to shake the boat even a modest little bit - the Naders and Sanders - are the ones most viciously fought, not the nominal opposition

the real binary is not the two-party system, but rather the kayfabing wrestlers vs. those trying to tear down the kayfabing dynamic to get to something real