And as always, you decide that I've said something I haven't.
You talked about “the party” that was supposed to be fighting fascism. It honestly hadn’t even occurred to me to designate some other group of people who were “supposed to” accomplish it on my behalf. My point was, we should be fighting fascism. You and me. I think it’s silly to pick out someone else who’s “supposed to” be doing it, although, yes, it is true that anyone else should also be “supposed to” be doing it too. But more, I was viewing it as a personal task and responsibility, and I thought it was silly and passive to turn that whole thing into a reason to whine about the Democrats (although there is one specific sense in which it’s completely justified which I address in my second paragraph).
Now that I’ve explained a little more fully does that sound more ok? I was exaggerating a little to lampoon what sounded like your central message because it’s boring if I just lay out what my specific disagreement is with what you said. I mean it’s definitely boring on my side for me to lay out for the 200th time why I disagree with some conversation that all of a sudden for no organic reason at all turned into “and that’s why the Democrats are bad!” out of nowhere.
We might have some disagreement because you could describe that all as “incrementalism” and say that Biden’s no good unless he’s willing to overthrow capitalism or use his magic wand to get congress go agree to the massive things that would have needed to happen to overcome 40+ years of neoliberal betrayal. I think the fact that he was able to accomplish it at all with Washington the way it is is a feckin miracle.
To me, the issue with the Democrats, that laid the groundwork for Trump, wasn’t “incrementalism” or too slow progress in the right direction. It was shittiness and active movement in the wrong direction. Biden’s not guilty of that, so I didn’t accuse him of it. If the Democrats since 1992 had been doing incrementalism, we might have some kind of country that is even in the neighborhood as good as it was in 1992, and it wasn’t real great in 1992.