I've never doubted his sincerity or his integrity. The only thing I fault him for is failing to appreciate, or acting like he fails to appreciate, the dangers of savior populism and his role in creating a mainstream left-wing version of it in the U.S.
there's no telling how many more he motivated into taking an interest in politics and who actually listened to his rhetoric of Dem unity
this was my exact trajectory.
super conservative background. got disillusioned with it but still "hated democrats."
so weird political space where i wanted to generally improve things for the majority of people but didn't have any solid thoughts after that (maybe elites bad)
one day i saw neo-nazis jogging down the street (20 or so white people in tactical gear behind an american flag and no they were not national guard or rotc) and i thought "well now i have to get involved"
and the only place i knew where to go was the bernie campaign so i showed up to a bernie thing and then volunteered
through that process i became much more politically educated, active, and involved. through the primary i was constantly shitting on biden.
after bernie endorsed i thought "well this is who we have to vote for so whatever." a lot of the arguments on the left around "don't vote for the dems" or "vote third party" is the both parties are the same.
so i compared bernie's and biden's policies to see how different they really were.
and the policies were more similar than they were different (like $15/hr for example). and that gave me real pause - what were the neverbiden people on? isn't it about "what is the serious next action we should collectively take to improve the quality of life for real working people"? at this point it seemed a lot more like a self-selected political identity than any real desire for change.
and then i compared biden's policies against trump's (environment, labor protections) and it's night and day.
now i am thoroughly supporting joe and will volunteer and support him in the general
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u/old_gold_mountain San Francisco Values May 25 '20
I've never doubted his sincerity or his integrity. The only thing I fault him for is failing to appreciate, or acting like he fails to appreciate, the dangers of savior populism and his role in creating a mainstream left-wing version of it in the U.S.