Supporting Israel is supporting terrorism.

The US was founded by displacing indigenous people. Are you saying that indigenous people should retake the US? All Israelis do not agree with Netanyahu.

Does peaceful coexistence and equal rights not even occur to you, or is it that you have no desire to peacefully coexist with those who are different from you, that you would frame the discussion as if the only possibilities are one ethnic group displacing the other?

Both indigenous Americans and Palestinians have a right to self-determination, and yes, I do support reparations and land reform in the US that restores stolen and privatized land to the commons, so long as no one is currently living on it. In the case of Israel much of the land has been stolen in living memory and all homes occupied by first-generation settlers should be immediately restored to the Palestinians they were taken from (or their nearest relatives if the IDF already killed the previous occupants in the genocide). Second-generation and so on can continue to live where they are, but it will be in a free Palestine where Palestinians must be able to return to these places and live freely alongside them. The apartheid state of Israel is not entitled to exist, people are, and the name of the country in which they live scarcely matters more than if they have equal rights.

Biden was not a centrist. He allowed illegal migrants to flood across the border despite polls showing that most Americans wanted tighter border security. Trump made border security a top issue.

First off, Biden did cave to you reactionaries and tighten border security in the second half of his presidency after he had reversed only some of Trump’s border controls in the first half. Second, immigration is not harmful (although the exploitation of immigrant labor is, both to the immigrants themselves and to the working class as a whole) and the only thing strict border security and mass deportations do is cause astronomical suffering and deprive millions of their basic human rights.

Democrats should be anti-Netanyahu, not anti-Israel

This is like saying you should oppose Hitler but support the German Reich. Israel is a settler-colonial apartheid state that was established by the violent displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in living memory and motivated by Zionism, an ethno-supremacist fascist ideology that works towards- and has succeeded in - establishing a Jewish ethnostate that upholds a regime of apartheid, occupation, and genocide.

Progressives might win in some areas because voters are frustrated with Trump but later, they might regret electing a progressive just as some voters now regret voting for Trump.

Voters elected the centrists who have been in control of the party for years and now regret it. Trump’s victory is the establishment dems’ failure, and their refusal to learn and change is rooted in their willful incompetence, lack of any real conviction aside from maintaining their comfortable positions, and their willingness to cater to the interests of their wealthy donors over the interests of their constituents.

Democrats simply wanted a candidate who could beat Trump. In Kamala Harris they chose the wrong person. She was so dumb that she said she wouldn’t do anything different than Biden despite knowing that the GOP strategy was to link her to Biden.

It’s odd that you criticize her for being like Biden while advocating for more of the same. How do you cope with the cognitive dissonance?

You weren’t talking about the merits of progressive vs moderate policy though, and neither was @[email protected], this conversation is about the electability of progressives vs moderates in red districts. Do you concede that progressives are just as electable in red districts as moderates if not more so? Pivoting when you’re losing an argument rather than conceding the point is a sneaky thing to do.

The article you linked includes this quote from La Raja:

The Democratic Party is a very mixed coalition, and primary voters are more concerned with winning this election rather than being purists on policies

This quote alone immediately removes all credibility La Raja might have had as a political commentator since it is so obviously out of touch with reality. If this were true then Kamala Harris would have won in 2024. The fact that she didn’t (in large part due to her support of Israel’s genocide - a fact which these policy-wonk types bend over backwards to ignore - as well as economic concerns) shows that the Democratic voting base is predominantly less concerned with simply winning and more concerned with electing a candidate that proposes policies with a strong moral foundation and which address the people’s most pressing economic needs during a time of crisis.

This next quote at the end of the article completely gives away the game for La Raja:

"One of the things that concerns me about some of the recent Democratic primary results is the apparent emergence of an anti-Israel stand as a litmus test,” he said. “ If this assumes the same importance as, say, a pro-choice position in order to be a legitimate candidate on the Democratic side, I don’t think this will be good for the party, the country, American Jewish people, the Middle East, or the world.”

This man is a genocide apologist applying motivated reasoning in suggesting that “moderates” run in red districts not because he thinks they will have a better chance of winning the general (even in the bit that you quoted he states that he thinks progressives have just as much of a chance), but because he fears an anti-genocide coalition achieving a majority in the DNC.

I would ask, how much are voters willing to punish the Republican party? Increasingly, it seems they are very unhappy with direction of country with Trump and Republicans in charge. So that means ideology matters less in the general election - so progressives may do just as well in the general election

In fact, after reading the whole article it’s very apparent that they are framing the recent trend of progressive insurgents winning primaries as something potentially dangerous that is only made possible by Trump’s historic unpopularity. You started this thread by making an electability argument against progressives in red states, but the article you linked eschews the electability argument in favor of fear-mongering about an anti-Semitic strawman of the progressive left.

They usually start as foot soldiers in a formal state military before moving on to mercenary work.

As someone who has lived their entire life in a red district, this is woefully incorrect. The only people here who would describe themselves as moderates are liars or people who never vote.

the ‘establishment’ Dem factions that will do everything possible to subvert a campaign

What you’re doing now is part of how the establishment subverts campaigns. They always selectively apply the ‘electability’ argument only to progressives and insurgents while embracing identity politics for their own candidates. Whenever a progressive of any minority group runs the nation “isn’t ready,” but when it’s one of theirs “it’s time.”

Even if we get a Democratic majority they could still easily disappoint us if the wrong ones win their primaries.

I’m not saying that imperialist aggression didn’t / doesn’t contribute to the collapse of socialist states - it most certainly does - I’m saying campists tend to get tunnel vision and think that it’s the only reason they fail. Cuba has actually been quite successful at enduring in spite of imperialist aggression, and I think there’s a lot of benefit in asking what it is they are doing better than past socialist states. In my opinion the answer lies in the fact that their governmental structure is far more horizontal in comparison to other attempts at socialism such as the USSR, and that has resulted in policy that is far more responsive to the specific material needs of local communities within Cuba. Contrast the USSR in which the pseudoscientific beliefs of a central authority figure turned what could have been a brief and localized food shortage into a full-blown famine spanning the entire union.

With regard to China being state capitalist, I skimmed the essay you linked well enough to see that it does not address the anarchist critique of state “socialism,” namely that state ownership does not truly constitute collective ownership because the state is a hierarchical institution that centralizes decision-making power in such a way that the will of the people affected is often ignored. Don’t get me wrong, I acknowledge the undeniable successes and advantages of central planning when compared to the neoliberal method of not planning at all beyond the fiscal quarter, but those are not the only options. I believe that horizontal planning is superior to both, and is the only way for an economy to be truly socialist in character. Examples of this being done can even be found in the revolutions that created the USSR and the PRC before they seized state power. It’s also not a discrete binary; there is a spectrum between totalitarian dictatorship and full horizontalism, and the projects which are most successful tend to veer towards the latter rather than the former.

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How does this make sense in response to a meme showing that I support Palestine? I know y’all love to use rule 1 to censor people for “bigotry” but at least put some effort into making it plausible.

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He likely asked Xi to do something relating to Iran and this was one of the conditions.

My only gripe with this is that the state in its current form cannot be trusted to be an impartial judge of what constitutes hate speech. We see today that many states around the world are using anti hate speech laws to suppress criticism of the state of Israel. Giving the state broad powers to crack down on speech that it deems hateful will inevitably result in the state deciding that all criticism of its actions or the actions of its allies constitutes hate speech.

As an alternative, I prefer that hate speech be met with social consequences rather than criminal ones.

I’m responding to the meme which presents learning and critique as separate and mutually exclusive. In order to learn from something you have to critique it, and if you believe that China is not perfect then you know this and should agree with me.

There’s also another thing you’re doing that I see MLs do all the time, which is posit that Chinese socialism is uniquely suited to China and that it must be implemented differently in other places. While I do agree that this is the case, I often see MLs use this argument to excuse flaws in the implementation of socialism in China as necessary alterations required due to the particular conditions and historical circumstances in which it was created.

IMO there were many wrong turns and mistakes that China made in its socialist transition that have had lasting negative consequences, and though they can often be explained by China’s particular conditions and historical circumstances, that doesn’t excuse them.

This is reminding me a lot of the Prairieland case in the US, and that really doesn’t bode well for the defense.

Surely you know precisely what I’m referring to.

I didn’t want to assume that you were unashamedly calling for war crimes, but thank you for spelling it out and removing all doubt. What you are hoping for is morally reprehensible.

What does “going all out” mean in this context?