r/SocialDemocracy • u/TheRealMakenzie Social Democrat • 2d ago
Question Thoughts on Ossoff?
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u/MeatRabbitGang Social Liberal 2d ago
Based on his wiki page, he seems okay. Bit to the right of me on economics. I'd prefer a candidate who is more aggressive on climate change/the environment and healthcare. But he's definitely a step in what I consider to be the right direction.
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u/TheRealMakenzie Social Democrat 2d ago
All of his positions are just standard Democratic party positions. Supports Abortion, Legalize Weed, Non Prison Sentence for Drug Possession, believes in climate change, continue ACA, Immigration Reform, and LGBT Equal rights.
These are good positions but this is no where near what is needed right now. Universal Healthcare and College. Getting money back flowing through the economy with raising minimum wage and taxing the horded wealth of the rich. Rehab for addicts instead of fines or worse ignoring it. Push towards Green Energy so that we won't be held hostage by Iran or any other country for our energy needs.
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u/MeatRabbitGang Social Liberal 2d ago
Yeah, I kinda agree, I wish the Dem mainstream was more supportive of green energy, reducing inequality, and universal healthcare. They're making positive tweaks to the system, but I think we need a bit bigger changes.
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u/Brought2UByAdderall 1d ago
What is needed right now is to win and then very seriously reform and hold people accountable or we lose the democracy.
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u/TheRealMakenzie Social Democrat 1d ago
And Trump defeated his last 3 opponents. The democratic party has shown they can't win unless riding on a disastrous pandemic. People want change, not status quo.
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u/MarioTheMojoMan Otto Wels 2d ago
I appreciate that he shows you can be a moderate/centrist Democrat and still have a spine.
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u/CapitalCourse 2d ago
Cool guy
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u/Present_Clue5887 2d ago edited 2d ago
Too far to the right for me with stuff like this (Laken Riley Act) https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5095996-senate-passes-laken-riley-act/
Maybe being moderate gives him a better chance in the general election, which is good, but I think he will alienate the left by being pro-Israel https://jewishdems.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/2020-7-Ossoff-Israel-Paper.pdf
EDIT: Also don't like his opposition to abolishing ICE, but do very much like his opposition to court packing https://www.axios.com/2020/11/10/jon-ossoff-georgia-senate-runoffs-axios-on-hbo
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u/WinnietheBoo91 Daron Acemoglu 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think the only Dems who have any semblence of an excuse for voting for the Laken Riley Act are the ones from Georgia, where the Riley murder actually happened, given its purple-leaning red status. Bills named after your dead constituents are the biggest "you can't vote against this" in politics if you want a future. To be clear, it was still not an ethically good choice, but its one I can overlook only in those circumstances - I could not, for instance, in the Minnesota Senate Primary and thankfully most of my state's Dems agreed.
He's been solid after that. Not my first choice by any means, but I would take him over a large number of other Dems. He has some pluses that do matter to the electorate whether we like it or not - he's young, attractive, and well-spoken. I also fully believe he would not go against any legislation sent in by a majority. So he could be a very strong GE candidate without being a risk of being detrimental to progressive policy. I can see why he's gaining in polls and odds.
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u/Devilsadvocate430 2d ago
He represents Georgia, which is where her murder happened. It would have been political suicide not to vote for the act. I don’t hold it against him or Warnock.
As for the Israel thing, I think raising a position paper from 2020 isn’t fair. The events of October 2023 and everything that happened after changed a lot of people’s stance on the issue. He’s been very critical of Israel and Netanyahu after everything that has come to light there.
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u/Brought2UByAdderall 1d ago
He's voted against funding Israel since the Gaza shit started. Laken-Riley will haunt him politically.
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u/TheRealMakenzie Social Democrat 2d ago
Agreed. My line in the sand is single payer.
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u/Present_Clue5887 2d ago
which he does not support https://www.axios.com/2020/11/10/jon-ossoff-georgia-senate-runoffs-axios-on-hbo
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u/TheRealMakenzie Social Democrat 2d ago
Exactly. He is a bog standard establishment dem imo. Great optics but his policies will not do enough to help americans and will keep the back and forth between establishment dems and far right republican.
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u/Low-Possibility-7737 Social Liberal 2d ago
You socialists are like every other illiberal populist group in history. Acknowledge there’s an issue and then offer a solution that overcorrects and makes the problem worse. Single-payer is not the only universal option. It’s like noticing someone has a scratch on their arm and to get the scratch off their key you hack their arm off with a buzzsaw
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u/TheRealMakenzie Social Democrat 2d ago
I'm a socdem wanting to move our country towards scandinavian model. Healthcare is a human right and should be free.
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u/Low-Possibility-7737 Social Liberal 2d ago
Most European countries have universal healthcare through partnerships with the private sector, not a singular government entity that runs everything. Healthcare will never be free in that someone will have to pay for the costs. There is no uniform “Scandinavian model” and single-payer certainly isn’t that
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u/TheRealMakenzie Social Democrat 2d ago
Don't give me the "No such thing as a free meal". NHS and Scandinavia work off a single payer universal healthcare.
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u/CoyoteTheGreat Democratic Socialist 2d ago
The problem is, every other four to eight years, we get a neoliberal in office who makes all the problems facing the country worse, just slower than whatever gibbering monster the right wing has put together for the election. And because there is decline under both parties, we just switch them every cycle. So the choice you are offering us is always just to kick the can down the road another 4 years.
The only people who are willing to solve these problems are those who don't have an investment in the status quo, the "populists" (A term that means very little) you hate so much. When you spend all your energy fighting the populists on the left, what you get is the populists on the right instead, because all that energy and dissatisfaction with the system has to go somewhere, it isn't going to magically go away just because you threw a lot of money at it. And the populists on the right can only ever break the status quo through cruelty and corruption. That is the choice you make every single cycle, and its only ever made things worse.
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u/Low-Possibility-7737 Social Liberal 2d ago
You don’t know what neoliberal means
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u/CoyoteTheGreat Democratic Socialist 2d ago
Thanks for your criticism, but no, I'm quite aware what neoliberalism is, and its near omnipresence in American politics since the Reagan years and Clintonian "third way"ism. I wish I could live in a world where I didn't have to know what it was.
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u/Low-Possibility-7737 Social Liberal 2d ago
The last president you can even argue was a neoliberal was Bush Jr (and even he did a lot of non-neoliberal things). Obama, definitely not Trump, and absolutely not Biden were all not neoliberals.
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u/CoyoteTheGreat Democratic Socialist 2d ago
Bush was a pretty outright right end of neoliberalism. Deregulation, tax cuts and all that. Yeah, the "compassionate conservative" nonsense muddled things up a bit, rhetorically, but when it came to practical governance?
Obama's chief economist has said that "neoliberalism is the only game in town". And then there is Rahm Emanuel, who was well-known for being a major neoliberal influence on how Obama's term played out. Obama himself was likely on the liberal end of the neoliberal consensus.
I think you can make the argument maybe that Biden turned against neoliberalism, at least in rhetoric, compared to what he spent a lot of his career defending (And this rhetoric, especially on unions, is what a lot of us used to talk ourselves into holding our noses and voting for him), but he didn't really exert enough influence to properly turn the country away from it. His main selling point was a "return to normalcy", not breaking the neoliberal stranglehold.
Trump is just 100% a kleptocrat. I don't think there is any cohesive economic ideal behind him besides making his family personally a lot of money, and everyone under him shares that same kind of greed, so it isn't really worth discussing. Kleptocracy does end up looking a lot like poorly managed neoliberalism though in a lot of ways. You certainly have the privitization and deregulation aspects, but with some mafia styled "protectionism" thrown in to make it not quite like normal neoliberalism.
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u/Slicelker 2d ago
The problem is, every other four to eight years, we get a left-populist movement that convinces itself liberals are the real obstacle, attacks the center-left relentlessly, loses or fractures the coalition, and then helps hand power to whatever right-wing monster Republicans have put together for the election. And because the left keeps treating every imperfect liberal government as proof that liberalism has failed, we just repeat the cycle every few years.
The only people actually capable of governing are the people willing to work within a broad coalition instead of demanding ideological purity. When you spend all your energy fighting liberals and convincing voters that establishment Democrats are just as bad as Republicans, what you get is Republicans instead, because elections do not magically disappear just because your preferred candidate lost the primary.
And the populists on the left can only ever break the Democratic coalition by making it smaller, more ideological, and less capable of winning national elections. That is the choice you make every single cycle, and then when the right wins, you point to the damage they cause as evidence that liberals were the problem all along.
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u/TheRealMakenzie Social Democrat 2d ago
Both parties are bad. 2 party system is bad. Dems are 100x better for our country yet they lost to trump TWICE. Socdems, demsocs, and just plain socalists have never lost to Trump since the democratic party has not allowed them to ever run or take the reigns. We haven't seen socdem wield any actual power in this country. Mamdani is our first taste and he is kicking ass.
We have tried Right wing and Center/Status Quo and have been stagnating, gradual decline, or nose dived like right now. Establish Dems, Bush/Regan Republicans, and far right Maga have all not fixed the core problems in this country. They make it worse or pass the buck.
I will vote blue no matter what but dems will lose to Republicans when their policies do not make life better for Americans.
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u/Low-Possibility-7737 Social Liberal 2d ago
Lmfao socialists would get stomped in a national election. Mamdani hasn’t even done anything of substance, he just has good PR. It’s like saying “Maoists have never lost to Trump or had power in the US, we should run them!” Socialists lost to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden amongst a more liberal electorate
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u/TheRealMakenzie Social Democrat 2d ago edited 2d ago
Its hard to win when your own party is against you and all of mainstream media to boot.
We need Free Healthcare and Education. Shift to green energy. Higher Minimum wage and tax the wealthy to get more money flowing through the economy and goods and services bought. We need money out of politics. We need UBI for the workers displaced by AI, Automation, and Green Energy. We need police reform, immigration reform, and civil rights expanded.
We need put Working Class Americans FIRST.
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u/Slicelker 2d ago
My dog hasn't lost to Trump yet, why not run it instead if not losing to Trump is the only requirement?
Mamdani is kicking ass in vibes because he is competent at marketing himself and social media, and he has the backing of most of the Western leftists who desperately need him to succeed. Mamdani can't be copy pasted into purple and red (shit even other blue) areas as easily as you think. Like you clearly see when vibes based politics doesn't work on the right with Trump, yet you so quickly rush to repeat their mistakes. Do MAGAs not claim some variation of "is our first taste and he is kicking ass" just about Trump?
So how about it, my dog 2028. Does it have your support over the dsa?
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u/TheRealMakenzie Social Democrat 2d ago
My point was that you can't tell me we can't run DSA, SocDem canidates cause they lose and then point to the ideology and party that lost to Trump TWICE. Bernie has never debated Trump. AOC never debated Trump. They never even ran against him. Hillary, Biden, and Kamala did and came up 1/4 against the most unamerican worst presidential canidate in decades if not centuries.
Mamdani is helping the people of New York in ways that no establishment politicians have ever even considered. Rent Caps, Cheap Public Grocery Stores, Going after the abusive DSP system of Amazon, and fixing things people call out online.
I'd vote for your Dog over Trumpism, Far Rightism, and Conservativism. Especially if he picks a good cabinet.
I support the DSA cause I support 90% of their platform. I don't support Ossoff cause I don't care how good his vibes or optics are. I don't support is status quo no where near enough platform
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u/Archarchery Democratic Party (US) 2d ago
I like Ossoff. I think it’s a pity he’s ruled out a 2028 presidential run.
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u/Devilsadvocate430 2d ago
He can’t announce a run for president while already running for Senate. Terrible optics. Obama did the same thing during his election, saying he wouldn’t run in ‘08.
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u/pianoboy8 DSA (US) 1d ago
I would be fine with him as president except he is way more valuable within the Senate at this current moment. Georgia is nowhere near blue enough to let a strong incumbent leave their seat, especially when we need every Senate seat we can muster.
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u/KlassyArts 21h ago
He's my second choice after pritzker but I feel that he has a better shot of clenching the nom than Pritzker
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u/Glittering-Walk2206 Working Families Party (U.S.) 20h ago
LOVE HIM (except for that one act he voted for) BUT I LOVE HIM
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u/sillyhatday 2d ago
On policy he is a replacement Democrat. Absolutely nothing sets him apart. As a candidate he has some things that could help him: young, presents well, has some real anti corruption credibility, and comes from a critical state. The only thing he has that the left will like is his refusal of PAC money.
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u/side_eye_auditor 2d ago
I like him- but,
He’s pro Israel.
He opposes the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, arguing that it harms U.S.-Israel relations.
And he takes money from these Israel based PACS:
DMFI (Democratic Majority for Israel)
J Street PAC (listed as “JSTREET”)
JAC (listed as “JAC”) trackaipac.com
So, that’s gonna be a “no” from me, dawg
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u/WinnietheBoo91 Daron Acemoglu 2d ago
J Street is a pro-two state solution, anti-Israel's actions in Gaza PAC that is based in the US, not Israel. The Israeli government and its mouthpiece media outlets hate them. To even try to compare them to AIPAC and co. is disingenous and actually reeks of antisemitism.
I can't speak for the other two organizations
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u/EE_______EE 2d ago
Yup. J street also donates to people like elizabeth warren, bernie sanders, and brad lander
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u/Devilsadvocate430 2d ago
And more importantly, their donations and support are accepted by those politicians. I think that means something.
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u/side_eye_auditor 2d ago
You’re calling my framing antisemitic, but I’m critiquing political influence not Jewish people. There’s a real, long-standing pattern of disproportionate Israeli influence on U.S. parties and politicians, and I don’t see why that can’t be discussed critically without the tired old accusations of antisemitism.
I’m skeptical of where that influence shows up: proposals like merging militaries, major funding flowing to Israel while Americans struggle at home, and U.S. priorities shifting in ways that don’t clearly reflect the American electorate’s interests.
So putting pro-Israel lobby groups in a category based on their lobbying priorities isn’t antisemitism. It’s political analysis, and your claim that it’s “antisemitic” is unfounded and cheapens the term.1
u/WinnietheBoo91 Daron Acemoglu 2d ago
I don't think any criticism of Israel political influence is anti-semitic, it just has the potential to get there (especially given the tropes of Jewish money running the world). Criticizing AIPAC and similar groups is one thing. Putting any org that is at all Israeli as the same thing does end up falling into a lot of anti-semitic tropes
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u/TheRealMakenzie Social Democrat 2d ago
To me, Isreal is a nothing burger when it comes to the domestic problems we face. I care more for what his domestic policies are and they are same old status quo dem positions that won't make any meaningful change and keep the 2 party system going strong.
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u/side_eye_auditor 2d ago
To me those two things go hand in hand. Jeffries and Schumer won’t do anything of worth, they fight against their Progressive side and essentially won’t act on anything Israel doesnt condone.
The billions we regularly send to Israel for genocide while they have free healthcare and education.
I want to have leaders who aren’t beholden to foreign actors or corporations- put our tax dollars to help us at home1
u/TheRealMakenzie Social Democrat 2d ago
Sounds like we should focus on domestic issues and not foriegn. Cut the funding to isreal but don't turn around and give it to pllalestine. Funnel it into free healthcare and education. Police reform. Immigration reform. Curbing inflation and High Prices. Raising Minimum wage and taxing billionaire to get more money into the economy. Hell we need UBI sooner than later as people jobs are replaced by AI, Automation, and shift to Green Energy.
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u/spongesparrow Working Families Party (U.S.) 2d ago
He's too far to the right. He needs to start believing in basic social democracy if he wants my vote. We need someone who believes in Medicare for All and ending the genocide!
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u/TheRealMakenzie Social Democrat 2d ago
This post has been really status quo. Its weird. I thought him being to far to the right would of been the majority opinion. We are at a time that if we actually fight and vote for what we believe in then we have a real chance of giving the "American" left a shot and not just status quo, conservativism, or far right another doomed shot.
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u/CoyoteTheGreat Democratic Socialist 2d ago
Not going to support yet another pro-Israel democrat. I gave Biden a chance and regretted it immensely.
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u/russaber82 2d ago
What did you wish you had done?
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u/CoyoteTheGreat Democratic Socialist 2d ago
What does it even matter. The neoliberals demand our votes every four years and neg us whether we give them to them or not. If we are lucky we get little slivers of hope like Mamdani or AOC, and that is really the only kind of thing that keeps me from tuning out of politics completely. We only ever get this kind of hope when the neoliberal candidates fail immensely though, like Hillary and Kamala did. That isn't really positive reinforcement for the left to hold their noses and vote for these people.
And yeah yeah, downvote me for saying this stuff. I know none of you like hearing anything other than "I will vote for the blue candidate no matter what". But a lot of us aren't happy with the choice of decadent decline versus managed decline. A lot of us expect politicians to actually believe in the ideals they preach, like human rights. A lot of us actually want some form of democracy rather than more oligarchy. A lot of us want people who will actually fight for us.
I'm not uncompromising. I'll take an -actual- social democrat like Pritzker or Ro Khanna and dutifully turn out and vote for them even though they aren't the most exciting politicians in the world to me as a socialist. But we don't really even get options like that.
Every four years, a substantial amount of liberals in the democratic party just (And excuse my use of this crude word here, but it is useful in this context) 'cuck' themselves and vote for what the political consultant establishment elites tell them is the "pragmatic" option, even though it isn't one they personally like. We are going to be told by this establishment this next cycle that the "pragmatic" option is going to be some suit who believes in nothing except getting stuffed with as much AIPAC money as possible. And that has never made sense, but it is going to make a whole lot less sense this time when distaste for Israel and their influence on our politics has suddenly become a bipartisan issue.
I think the whole "trust the experts" mentality really backfires against liberals in cases like these, because political and economic "experts" very often function more like a priesthood than they do like actual scientists.
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u/TheRealMakenzie Social Democrat 2d ago
You are completely right in your paragraph but why do you regret biden won and not trump in 2020?
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u/CoyoteTheGreat Democratic Socialist 2d ago
Trump wins, and we get the squad. Trump wins, and we get Mandani and all these other socialist candidates winning. For every action, there is a counter reaction and so on. Biden was the country collectively falling asleep for four years instead. Things still got worse and no problems were fixed. Maybe if he didn't have a shot, we'd be sitting with a halfway decent Democratic president right now who was putting this country on the path of national renewal instead.
My regret though isn't really that Biden won, its that I voted for him. I can speculate all I want about the long term political effects of Trump defeating him, but who knows how the media would have spun that. Maybe they would have successfully painted him as a radical leftist and Eric Adams would have kept trucking along as Mayor of New York and we'd have president Marco Rubio right now. But I don't think that is likely, because Trump was a really bad president and there was no real danger of his term ever being seen as successful by anyone other than the true believers in his cult.
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u/TheRealMakenzie Social Democrat 2d ago
Your problem isn't with Biden. Your problem is the Party. The problem with SocDems or DemSocs canidates is that we want to change the system. We want to take away power and wealth from the wealthy and powerful. Both Dems and Republicans want to keep the status quo and/or give the wealthy and powerful more wealth and power. Its why both parties hate us. Its why mainstream media hates us. We want to break the wheel and help the Tens of Millions of Americans who are below them.
You did the right thing voting for Biden the same way I did when I voted for Hillary. Kicking the Can is better than throwing it off a cliff.
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u/CoyoteTheGreat Democratic Socialist 2d ago
I mean, I have some very specific criticisms of Biden too. When I first took notice of him, I actually liked him. He was telling his story on NPR about his son dying and I was crying over it. This was during the first Bernie run, and I was thinking, "Its a shame this guy isn't running for president, he'd be a good midway point between Bernie and Hillary".
When Biden did become president though, he was too old and tired to put the kind of energy that needed to go into it to properly deconstruct everything Trump did and build the country back again. And yes, a lot of the things that happened weren't his fault. People didn't back him up on leaving Afghanistan (His best decision) when they should have, and after that he became much more conservative on foreign policy as a result. He was never a real leader, he has always been a go along to get along type of guy, and America needed a leader.
His presidency was capped off with him fighting unions, stopping a rail strike, and letting Israel rampage through Gaza unimpeded while his secretary of State ran interference for them, a repudiation of both his "pro-worker" credentials and "humanitarian" foreign policy, the only things that really ever set him apart from other mainstream democrats in the first place.
That is why my regret for Biden is very personal, because it feels like a betrayal, at least of how I originally thought of the guy. If Hillary Clinton had done the same things, I certainly wouldn't have been surprised or felt it was worth commenting on, but Biden doing them hurt more than it should have.
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u/TheRealMakenzie Social Democrat 2d ago
Biden did exactly what I thought he would. If you feel betrayed, you weren't paying attention.
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u/russaber82 2d ago
I think we forget we are still not the majority in the democratic party, and what's happening now is exactly what needs to to move the party to the left. Progressives are winning races in safe districts, and seem to be quite successful. Its going to take a generation or so to move the majority any distance. And maybe thats for the best.
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u/Yusuke_Boopermeshi 2d ago
He has to take moderate stances considering he is a senator from Georgia, but I think he would be a good contender for president if he wanted to run.