SocraticGadfly: 2020 Democratic prez race on social media: Progressive jostling on candidate support, openness

March 22, 2019

2020 Democratic prez race on social media:
Progressive jostling on candidate support, openness

Maybe I should have "progressives" in scare quotes, especially speaking from outside the duopoly.

Or use the good old Fauxgressives label.

There are few actual progressives, and not a tremendous amount of Fauxgressives, supporting Kamala Harris.

But, in other cases?

Tulsi Gabbard is still drawing support from people who should, IMO, know better. People who are accepting her past apology for homophobia and not digging deeper, to note her support for the RSS and her support for neocons on Israel? Maybe I should call them Failgressives instead of Fauxgressives. In either case, they exist, and in abundance. That said, she's been good on Venezuela and other things. It still leads me to a question of whether she's truly antiwar or more anti-Americans getting killed in war.

Marianne Williamson? Down with Tyranny loves them some Marianne. Shock me. People I thought knew better do as well, though.

Bernie Sanders? Yes, the best among Democrats. But, still with plenty of holes in his foreign policy world, and the Trump / bipartisan foreign policy establishment's push for a coup in Venezuela — followed by Bernie's response, or rather, largely his non-response on social media — has showed some of those holes are pretty big. Not that a lot of Berniebros will accept that.

Betomania? Some here in the Pointy Abandoned Object State still lust for him, including some I thought were more progressive than that. This is part of why I may do a Facebook cleanup soon.

At the same time? In Bernieville, David Sirota has IMO committed an ethical faux pas. And after me standing up for him on Twitter.

Turns out he WAS secretly advising Sanders before taking a spox position with him.

Now, as I said on Twitter:


But, the damage is done.

Now, plenty of MSM flaks have been flakking for Beto without sekrutly working for him, other than the MSM likes style points candidates of the neoliberal Democrats in general. But it does, yes, raise a small bit of Credibility Gap issues with Sirota.

Maybe not huge. What he said about Beto, Kamala and others is true. But, he was doing it while advising Bernie.

That also puts into light that Sirota only addressed campaign financing issues, and a little bit other domestic policy issues.

Hence this:
Regular readers know that I've blogged about Bernie and things like his F-35 bromance, his weak knees, or downright opposition to, BDS, his weak knees on "Putin Did It" collusion claims, and also, his recent weak knees on Venezuela.

Sirota's not that uninformed on foreign policy. 

Maybe he just didn't care to write about it, whether at Capital and Main or The Guardian. Maybe he made a deliberate choice, though.

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Outside of the presidency? AOC is still a lightning rod. And she's still botched some things. But, just because she doesn't talk about every environmental issue in the world, and is focused on the Green New Deal, doesn't mean she's an anti-environmentalist. Nor do I think she was "forced down" any throats. A Google Trends shows a spike when she beat Crowley, and a bigger spike at the general election, then a drop again until the kerfuffle with the pre-swearing in workshops for freshman Dems followed by the Green New Deal. And, part of those spikes were wingnuts posting pictures of her dancing, then getting pwn'ed.

I'm going to call out what I see as wrong where I can. I will try not to slip up in how I do it. That's my bad.

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