Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Yes.

If Newsome ran on Bernie’s platform it’s probably a landslide.

If Newsom had Sanders’ platform, not only would he not be Newsom, he wouldn’t be the democratic darling.

AOC is supremely charismatic, and so is Sanders. Democrats keep them on short leashes because they’re popular, and because they’d completely ruin the democratic fundraising platform. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

It’s called pragmatism.

I’ve always found this word/idea funny because there’s a famous American psychologist by the name of William James that coined a branch of philosophy by that name, that was basically intended as a way of rationalizing religious belief by observing how it effected someone’s behavior.

People (including James) think that using that word evokes a type of self-evident common sense, when in reality it has always been a word that rationalizes commonly held but indeterminate and often irrational beliefs.

Idk man. You do what’s best for your kids, but I think it’s irrational to abandon your convictions because you have greater faith in the superficiality of american voters than you do in your own political ideals. Maybe it’s true, but it’s just as likely that you are making that the case by undercutting your own values in favor of vanity.

I think it’s far more likely that democrats are mistaking a lack of charisma for a lack of popular policy. Maybe it isn’t because they lack charisma, but because they are in denial about there being something they’re leaving unaddressed with their middling technocratic ideas.

No offense, but what is even the point of your politics if it can be boiled down to, “sure, this guy has terrible policies and I hate the guy personally, but he can win so I’ll support him anyway”?

Democrats will never win if all they campaign on is ‘we just want the most charismatic person’. People already don’t have any faith in our democratic system, and now we’re just flat out telling them ‘the only thing we care about is aesthetics’.

Big yikes.

This seems a little begging the question.

Even if it wasn’t, it’s a little damning to liberals who now seem to only like a candidate if they think they are “charismatic”, which seems suspiciously ill-defined.

No thank you.

Libs have never met a white male moderate they wouldn’t vote for over any woman of color or socialist.

Oh fuck. They’re gonna force Newsom for 2028 aren’t they.

Europeans need to be reflecting on what kind of leadership they want to replace the US now that they’ve started stepping out.

For all the chaos they’re causing, especially in regards to this conflict, it’s not a bad thing that the US is losing geopolitical relevance. I just wish I had any confidence that something better would come from it.

Now is really the time for people to be organizing.

Jews and Muslims have had many extensive periods of peace living together (including in Palestine before the state of Israel). The story of Islamic-Jewish hostilities is actually fairly recent and shorter than you’d expect.

Antisemitism as we know it today is mostly a European export to the Middle East.

Idk man. If, just as an example, Biden “shot someone in the middle of 5th avenue”, i think it would be hubris to expect him not to lose any voters

You can call that ‘purity testing’ if you want, but I’d say that the expectation for it to have no effect is just wishful thinking.

Does it matter how morally bankrupt the 20% is?

Asking before I pose any analogies you might think is unfair

Unless there was a different incident, i’m pretty sure the one you’re talking about was a molotov cocktail, not a flamethrower.

I don’t advocate adventurism, but important to note that violence against jews is different than violence against Israeli state actors.

Just in case this meme is referencing the recent shooting of two Israeli Embassy workers. Again, I don’t advocate adventurism, but it’s important to recognize a distinction between violence directed at an ethnic group and violence directed at government officials.