Could have said “energy drink”, but shilling for a global megacorp is fine too I guess.

It might not be so simple. Once you’ve imposed these tariffs to your allies, you can’t go back to the world where they didn’t exist. Everyone sees this and will remember, it will take a long time to build trust again, including among investors.

The billionaires will possibly benefit from this, but it’s very risky. If he just wanted to please the wealthy, he could have just gone with some tax cuts and removing regulations as is traditional for the Republicans.

He in fact did, just the win was stolen by the supreme court.

Agreed. Moronic idealism to back corporate interests over the working class by the Dems certainly screwed us over.

That’s not idealism my friend, just cold opportunism and cynical realism.

Imagine if the Dems actually stole policies from Nader, and sucked in those Nader voters? Imagine how much better we’d be as a nation?

This is a good point. However Gore was a good candidate. Not perfect, but good with a chance of winning. Nader was perhaps perfect for some people, but he absolutely could not have won anything in that election.

Yes, the Republican supreme court was the real problem. However, with Nader’s votes it would have been more difficult to claim victory, as Florida would have been a wider margin win for Gore. What were those Nader votes good for? Absolutely nothing.

Nader pulled from D and R voters in equal measure. Nader’s Wikipedia page disagrees. Miami-Dade county was deliberately obstructed from completing its vote counting by Republican campaign staff Blaming Nader for a judicial coup is asinine.

Yes, we should not forget that the Republicans were the real villains here. And that the Democrats should have protested much harder. However, the point is that Gore was initially declared winner, but because his margin was not significant enough, there was room to obfuscate the victory. Had he gotten Nader’s votes, it would have been more difficult to claim Bush victory.

You hardly have to imagine. Just ask Republicans how they felt about the Perot voters in '92, when Clinton swept the EC with 43% of the total vote.

Yeah, it was mostly a rhetoric question. I was mainly thinking all the bullshit about stolen election in 2020.

The degree to which Florida has been fumbled by Dems for the last 30 years cannot be overstated.

As much as they messed up there, I have to point out that a significant percentage of the voters went for Nader (although would have preferred Gore to Bush). That stupid idiotic moronic idealism cost them and the world two pointless wars in the Middle East, whose ripple effects can still be felt. Nevertheless R’s just stole the election and the D’s rolled over I suppose in order not to cause instability and keep the corporate overlords happy. Can you imagine how angry the R machinery would have gotten if the roles were reversed (possibly some of the D base as well, but just because they’re not similar scum as R voters)?

The democrats are very good at fighting a change inside their own party. They’re very bad at fighting republicans on the national stage. Case in point, voter suppression in the last election, the stolen election of Gore v. Bush in 2000 (Gore had majority in Florida in the end, did you hear CNN reporting about it?)

To extend a bit, the DNC controls the machine to run elections. They are friends with the corporate donors and the “left wing” media. Without their support it’s very hard to brand yourself as a full blown democrat candidate, which eventually will matter to the voting public.

Carl Sagan.

Oh boy must those guys have felt pretty darn silly when they found out what happened! Gee whiz!

Thanks, I didn’t realize it was possible. Well, not gonna start arguing about mod policy, but I think down votes would have been just fine here. Anyway, no strong feelings in any direction here.

I bet you were very badly wrong in your comment, but I would have at least like to see it (and down vote it too if it deserved it). I don’t need protection from stupid, just illegal or outright racist/offensive.

Greedy assholes definitely ruin a lot for all of us.

Harari claims something similar in his book Sapiens, so it might not be so far fetched. However, even then people would have to pay for being alive with their work, even if it’s less.

This is true also when you have strong unions to bargain for good benefits. Still, you need to do some work, as opposed to the message of the meme “you have to pay for being alive”.

The only problem is the exploitative angle of the whole thing. They do underpaid work, but the farm owning corporation gets to keep the profits.

Before 1989 there was also a third option: move to West Berlin!

Has there ever been a time in human history where we were just allowed to exist for our passions and not work for survival? Our economic system definitely has its flaws, but this meme paints with too broad strokes.

I can’t really say you’re wrong, since we will never know. I had the feeling that Biden was reluctant to do anything because of the incoming elections, whereas Harris might have done something. But alas, we’ll never know.

(as a side note, I feel like you’d have gotten away with both parties better here, as the “both sides” is typically just used to equate nazis with regular people and normalize/excuse their behavior - nothing wrong with hating the term)