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Seems reasonable to me. God knows no one in Pennsylvania has been any better off for voting John Fetterman. Play the game as best you can with the cards you have, and fold when that's the right choice, and then work to make the game function better through organizing and other means.
You think Dr. Oz would have been better? I have my doubts.
It's a ridiculous assertion. Dr. Oz would obviously have been worse. As terrible as Fetterman is, Oz would have been in full lockstep with Trump and the Senate would be under even firmer control of the GOP right now. Trump could have been more successful legislatively if they had another Senator to make winning votes easier. If nothing else, it would have provided another seat they could use to let Senators like Collins and Murkowski do their performative BS on more votes so its easier for them to win re-election.
People don't realize that Fetterman votes with Democrats 90% of the time. That's a lot better than having a Trump sycophant in that seat.
This is the answer.
Fetterman makes me want to punch my walls. But still better than something like Oz.
Same way manchin was far better in that wva seat. Now it's that coal baron who doesn't even bother to hide corruption and gleefully votes everything Republican.
It would not have made a difference. It's like asking if you'd rather face the firing squad or face the wall and get shot in the back. Same outcome regardless of "choice", but by choosing Fetterman, the whole democratic party is weakened by the exercise.
Fetterman votes with Democrats 90% of the time. Dr. Oz would have voted with Democrats 0% of the time. That's a big difference.
The context here being that John fetterman votes against his party more often than any other senator, Democrat or Republican. And he breaks with them on larger issues. He breaks with the party pretty often in big ways when it comes to nominations too.
That 90% is including a lot of procedural votes. But still the point sorta stands and he voted in line with the Democrats more often than my gut reaction expected.
That's also not to say that I think dr oz would be better than fetterman but the fact is fetterman being in office is a failure of the dnc.
My understanding is people who followed Fetterman's career judge that he dramatically changed after his stroke, which happened after the primary. The party voters chose his pre-stroke self. The dnc has a lot of failures under their belt, but I don't think not trying to invalidate the primary voter's choice because the guy had a stroke was one of them.
Is it? Because they still haven't passed or blocked anything meaningful. It's really easy to "Vote with the party" when you know they're going to lose regardless. Your metric may be true, but it's ultimately meaningless.
You could say that about anyone in the minority party at any time. You're assuming Fetterman would change his voting pattern with Democrats in the majority, with no data to back up that assertion.
I don't like Fetterman either, but the time to fight him is in the primary. In the general election you pick the lesser evil, and the lesser evil is never the Republican.
I'm sorry, no evidence except every word that comes out of his mouth.
That's self-contradictory. If he's sneakily voting with Democrats now just to flip when they're in the majority, why would he say that stuff and blow his cover? Is he being sneaky or not? Make up your mind.
I think it's far more likely that he disagrees with Democrats on some high profile stuff, but still agrees and votes with the Democrats for a bunch of other stuff. That's still better than having Dr. Oz, who would vote in lockstep with Republicans on absolutely everything.
How. Name one vote he made a difference on. Just one. I'll wait.
Name one vote any of the other Democrats made a difference on. They're in the minority, none of their votes can do shit!
I have to assume you're arguing in bad faith at this point. I'm going to disengage from this conversation.
So then how exactly would Oz be worse? If Fetterman can safely vote with Democrats, except when it really counts, knowing his vote doesn't change anything at all, meanwhile getting a platform to slander and tarnish the whole democratic party with impunity, and even make headlines sending video love notes to the RNC while doing it, how is he materially worse than Oz? Oz literally could not do more damage to the country than Fetterman already is doing, and he couldn't drag every Democrat in Congress through the mud with him while doing it.
You won't reply because you can't. There is no defense for his behaviour. Period.
That whole premise doesn't make sense. At the time of voting, you do not know what party would be in the majority. With slightly different results nationwide, Fetterman could have been the tipping point in the Senate. If he voted with Democrats even just a single time in those conditions, that would be better than Oz.
If we're looking at his current impact given the results we got, it's probably better to consider what he voted against. Democrats obviously can't pass anything right now, but which Republican bills have failed? Not a lot, Republicans mostly vote in lockstep, but there have been a couple of budget bills, and most importantly the SAVE act failed by a single vote. Fetterman voted against it. With Oz in that seat it would almost certainly have passed, making it a lot easier for Republicans to ratfuck the midterms.
Regarding your comments on Fetterman reflecting poorly on Democrats, I have never seen anyone make this claim before. In general, people understand that Democrats don't control Fetterman, and whatever he says only reflects poorly on himself. This is a lot like how we felt about Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. The sentiment I'm seeing is to primary them next time and move on.
I also find it cute that you announce preemptive victory if I don't respond to your comment, considering I already said I was going to disengage. This time around I'm actually dropping the thread, though, so feel free to lay the logical fallacies on thick in your inevitable reply.
There is no "folding" in life. There is no walking away. You can abstain from giving specific input, but you are still subject to and share responsibility for the results. What is needed is people that push to have the best possible choice for a given election and will vote for the best choice available. Doing only one is not enough.
No, there's definitely "folding" in life. Or "logging out", or whatever euphemism you can think of.
You just don't get to deal back into the game after you fold.
The problem with fascism is that it will take an interest in you even if you don't take an interest in politics. People that are folding are not able to really opt out.
...not in this context. Unless you got some fashy necrophiliacs, I guess...
There is a point at which the "best possible" is not sufficiently distinct from the worst possible that it becomes irrelevant for the individual in question. There was literally no benefit to Fetterman over Oz for most people. The only option was to work to make sure neither of them ever get another chance and to try to mitigate the harm that was going to be done when either one wins. I want to be clear, I don't think this applies to the party as a whole but this is why (from the perspective of many) it does, because in their specific case the outcome is the same regardless. It's a perfectly rational choice at the scale of the individual, because their interests, aren't even on the ballot.
You and anyone else that doesn't think Oz would have been significantly worse, or thinks it "doesn't affect them", is naive or arguing in bad faith. The better option can suck, but both-sidesing the situation to excuse not voting at all serves nobody but the worse option.
To pull from the quote from the OP:
Chomsky said much the same - he has spilled all kinds of ink chronicling how terrible the Democrats have been over the course of multiple decades (in addition to Republicans of course), but he's been quite clear on the fact that there is indeed a difference, and a difference that matters.
Name one bill that Is would have changed the outcome on? Go ahead, I'll wait.
Nice tautology. You can't justify not voting by of the predictably bad results of not voting.