• Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    That would require Zohran to be ideologically liberal. I think it’s pretty clear from a number of litmus tests that he’s a socialist. It’s much more difficult to go from being a socialist to a centist. Ideologically, being a socialist isn’t merely a step to the left of liberal. It’s a fundamentally different worldview which resembles American liberals in a few areas but only in appearance. E.g. both a liberal and a socialist might advocate for universal healthcare. The liberal feels that private healtchare is a defect of an otherwise functioning system. The socialist sees the system working as intended in that it enriches the oligarch class via private healtchare. Therefore the socialist sees public universal healthcare as removing a revenue stream from the oligarch class, diminishing its power in the process and reducing the scope of the capitalist system. The improvement to people’s lives naturally follows as a consequence of that. From this perspective, it would be very difficult for a socialist to be convinced they should abandon universal healthcare because insurers would lose too much money like Obama did.

    • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      He says he’s a socialist.

      Democrats say a lot of things that sound really, really good too… until they’re elected, and then we realize they’re shit-stains.

      • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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        4 months ago

        You’re not wrong and that could totally be the case but again, he’s gotta be a really good actor to keep the socialist line when being grilled on some issues. It’s certainly possible that he is. But I think he’s leftist schtick is very different than Obama’s. Only one way to find out. Vote for him if you’re in NYC. 😁

        • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          I badly want to be wrong, but there’s something about these supposed progressives that changes when they get into office and suddenly are confronted with the possibility that they can 100% exploit their office to give their family generational wealth.

          So while I’m cautiously optimistic, most of me is very ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’.

      • Serinus@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        I think part of that is true and part of that is that they just don’t get enough votes to actually do things.

        Especially as just a Congressperson you can’t change everything all at once. You don’t have the same influence as a president. So you pick your battles.

        People here get disappointed they didn’t get enough done fast enough and then vote red in the next election hoping for faster change.

        Well, we got faster change. Never seen change as fast as this.

        • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          I don’t think so.

          People not voting comes down to living through the last eight years and both parties doing nothing meaningful about the fact that you’re working 100 hours a week at three jobs and all you can afford is a roach-infested studio.

          Why would you miss a badly needed day’s pay?

          As for the folks who switched to vote Trump. That was the only option for change that they had, and they knew from experience how shitty Biden/Harris were. Of course they switched.

    • Rinox@feddit.it
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      4 months ago

      It’s much more difficult to go from being a socialist to a centist.

      Mussolini was a socialist, and I don’t mean in a fake “national socialist” way (although yes, later he became that), I mean he was an important figure of the “Italian socialist party”, editor in chief of the official party newspaper

      • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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        4 months ago

        Well he didn’t turn into a tinkering-around-the-edges liberal. 😄

        I’m not arguing that people’s views can’t change. Rather I’m making this narrow point of the difficulty shifting towrds the centre from a liberal versus socialist position. I think one’s much lower friction than the other. Both are possible.