[farmerstan]

The biggest mistake he and Democrats keep making is blaming “billionaire Republicans”. It’s not Republicans it’s Democrats voting him out.

He either refuses to acknowledge that the Democrat voters themselves are rejecting his policies out of hubris or it’s a way to shame democrats by accusing them of acting like Republicans. But it didn’t work and only infuriated and calcified anti-Boudin people even more.

Democrats at the federal level better take heed. If San Francisco who is overwhelmingly Democrat will reject extreme progressive policies like Boudin’s, hopefully it means the Dems can regain some sense of rationality.

My friends and I have all made a pact that we will vote Republican until the Dems come more to the center, no matter how horrible the Republicans candidate is. That’s the only way we can change behavior is through voting, and in CA they have come to take voters for granted for decades and left California a progressive experiment gone off the rails to the point of lunacy.

[orblivion]

> blaming “billionaire Republicans”

I just can't imagine a world where an ousted politician (or elected bureaucrat in this case) says "wow I guess I really fucked up, I'm sorry. I'll pack my things and be out in the morning". They have to save face by blaming somebody.

[dash2]

Maybe it is different in the UK. John Major, 1997: "Tonight we have suffered a very bad defeat, let us not pretend to ourselves that it was anything other than what it was. Unless we accept it for what it was, and look at it, we will be less able to put it right." Ed Miliband, 2015: "I take absolute and total responsibility for our defeat. I'm so sorry for all those colleagues who lost their seats."

[belval]

No, maybe this is the norm in the US, but this is not normal and we should not pretend it is.

In Canada, most defeat speeches I've watched were about the candidate mistakes, what they were proud of having accomplished, etc... Playing the blame game is pathetic.

If you want an example, Stephen Harper's concession speech in 2015 was pretty good.

[orblivion]

Concession for a normal political defeat is one thing. In the US they don't usually blame, they do how you describe, and congratulate the opponent. Even Donald Trump did this once or twice to Ted Cruz in the primary.

A recall is specifically calling out the politician for failing badly enough to interrupt the election cycle.

[loudmax]

> we will vote Republican until the Dems come more to the center, no matter how horrible the Republicans candidate is

That's pretty illustrative of a lot of American politics. Republicans have been moving further and further away from the center for the past six years, and have paid little price for their extremism.

[QuarterReptile]

Are there Republicans on ballots in San Francisco? My impression is that races tended to be between different flavors of Democrat in most cases.

[the_biot]

> My friends and I have all made a pact that we will vote Republican until the Dems come more to the center, no matter how horrible the Republicans candidate is.

I would recommend making an exception for Republicans who deny Biden won the 2020 election. The #1 rule for voting in a democracy is: never vote for somebody who doesn't believe in democracy, because chances are you will never get to vote him out.

[adamsmith143]

>My friends and I have all made a pact that we will vote Republican until the Dems come more to the center, no matter how horrible the Republicans candidate is.

This is an extremely dangerous position to take. You are literally willing to vote Hitler into office rather than a progressive?

[rojcyk]

That is a huge stretch.

[adamsmith143]

>That is a huge stretch.

Is it though?

"we will vote Republican until the Dems come more to the center, no matter how horrible the Republicans candidate is."

No matter how horrible.

[Bud]

Anyone who thinks this is a stretch needs to be watching the Jan. 6th hearings tomorrow night.

We came within a hair of a fascist takeover of the US in 2021. That threat is now stronger than it has ever been.

[dpbriggs]

It wasn't even close. Life isn't a movie or a video game; if you take over a building, you don't take over the government.

Even if it escalated past that point (i.e. Trump messing around) there wasn't key buy-in from several necessary parties. How in the world was it "close"?

[ModernMech]

I urge you to please watch the hearings. What has been learned in the intervening months since the coup attempt is that it was premeditated, and the insurrection at the capitol was only one facet in a multifaceted plan to end democracy in America. The narratives that have been established by pro-insurrectionists -- that it was peaceful, that is wasn't a big deal, that it was spontaneous, that it wasn't planned, that the White House wasn't involved, that there were no guns, that it couldn't have ended democracy even in the worst case -- have all been shown by the committee to be false.

How in the world was it close? You answered the question yourself: all that was missing was key buy-in from several necessary parties. Namely: Pence, several low-level elections clerks, and several secretaries of state. Republicans have been working to replace these individuals with insurrectionist since 2020, and to also change laws where they were thwarted before (see the Georgia GOP's new ability to completely take over and throw out independent county elections where they don't like the results.)

The plan would have most certainly worked if Pence had left the Capitol on Jan 6. Grassley would have taken over Pence's duties, and he would have refused to certify the election. At that point, the vote would have eventually ended up at the House, with one vote allocated per state delegation. With Republicans in the majority of delegations, they would have installed Trump as president against the will of the people, thereby ending 200+ years of American democracy.

The plan was very complex, it was thought of by very smart and powerful people, it was executed with the explicit intention of ending democracy in America by people at the highest level of government, and thankfully it ultimately failed. Yet, it almost succeeded and we must take note that they only had 2 months to prepare. Next time they will have had 4 years. So please, for the love of country, watch every second of the 1/6 committee hearings. Please.

[dpbriggs]

Thank you for acknowledging that it wasn't close. It's awful what's transpired but unnecessary and breathless rhetoric will do us a disservice when the next, worse event occurs.

Even if the vote was delayed the legal system isn't an ethereum smart contract. Congress and presumably the supreme court would get involved to reverse the decision, or worse, have something similar to a civil war.

[devchix]

> The plan was very complex, it was thought of by very smart and powerful people

I watched the hearing, I mostly agree with you except for this part. It seems to me there were a confluence of factors colliding. The plan was not thought of by very smart and powerful people, it was a cockamamie legal spiel on the fringe cooked up by one law prof. The former president, true to his method of decision making, said essentially, Yeah, let's go with that, why not?

Meanwhile, there exists pockets of hard right militias, members of which have para-social relationship with Mr. Trump's twitter feed. They thought he was asking, ordering, them to come to the Capitol. It was "planned" like, "she was definitely winking at me, she wants me to ask her to the prom".

I keep in perspective a sense of skepticism, this is a trial with no advocate for the other side. Mr. Trump cannot be at the same time a clownish buffoon as well as an evil genius. But, the opportunity makes the man.

[tyen_]

Let me know when Adolf Hitler literally runs for office in the United States.

[voidfunc]

Better dead than red (progressive/communist) is a statement a lot of people would agree with in the US.

[adamsmith143]

A lot of people in the US would also be completely wrong. Progressives != communist and if anyone seriously thinks people in the Mainstream of the Democratic party are actually communist they are insane.

[z9e]

This is hilarious considering progressives in the 1930s praised Hitler as one of their own. Find a new talking point, 2016 was 6 years ago.