you lost the game

1) walkable cities

2) more eco-friendly everything

3) your boss couldn't force you to work weekends

4) teachers would get some fucking respect

5) restorative, rather than punitive, justice system

6) heavy-duty social safety net

7) emphasis on community

8) the abortion argument wouldn't be an argument because abortion isn't some fraught tangled issue in Judaism--it's a matter of health to be determined between a pregnant person, their doctor, and their rabbi, and the rabbi's role is basically to provide moral support

9) vaccines wouldn't be an argument. You're getting them because the science shows they protect people and we respect science and learning in this world. You're getting them because it's not all about you-you-you in this world. You have a duty to your community and that includes the preservation of life and health.

IBS would be actually researched

i was incredibly dysphoric about my round face and softer features until i started looking at the faces of hispanic men and realized that those features weren’t feminine at all, they were ethnic features white supremacy had conditioned me to see as less masculine

incredible

you say “nail jello to a tree” and most people think jello all by itself.

but if you put any actual thought into what you’re doing and then give it just a little support

well gosh. look what happens.

"They've got nobody in the Odyssey?"

"No I'm saying they don't got nobody."

"Nobody's there?"

"Nobody's not there!"

"So everyone's there?"

"Everybody but nobody!"

In the primary election, your voters are either all registered Democrats (closed primary) or voters who habitually lean Democratic (open primary). You'll sometimes get a Republican voting Democratic in an open primary just to ratfuck, but not by huge margins. Primary voters are much more engaged and politically aware than the general electorate.

Much as they may deny it, these bozos are clearly all trying to emulate Obama. Barack Obama's win in 2008 was a fluke, and I don't think leftists realize that. I was a teenager and had a front-row seat to how bad shit was, although I didn't understand it all at the time (I have since read research about his campaign and he was underwater before key endorsements). George W. Bush was considered a national disgrace. "Fannie Mae" and "Freddie Mac" were household names, the housing bubble was bursting, and we were on the brink of the Great Recession. And EVEN SO, Hillary Clinton had so much support that he could have lost the primary. I know this because I helped campaign for him the summer and fall of 2008, and someone I cold-called said she was never voting for him after he "did Hillary like that," and she hoped I wasn't expecting to "give him no money." EVEN SO, we were all terrified that McCain might win, and before the crash in Fall 2008, he looked like he had a fighting chance.

My dad was working with rural individuals in a neighboring county that year. He told me, not too long before the election, that someone he talked to told him Obama was a "[N-word]," but they were voting for him because of the economy. He was a populist hero ONLY in the eyes of young Democrats because he seemed like one of us. The rest of the country saw him as their last hope to pull them out of an economic hole after Dubya crashed the Clinton surplus into the ground and put us in a pointless war. And when he couldn't singlehandedly do that, they turned on him. There are states that went blue on Election Night 2008, but haven't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since. (No one thinks of Indiana as anything other than a red state anymore.)

The ACA? Obama's triumphant piece of legislature, the crown jewel of his political career, the law that ended his supermajority, the thing any leftist would cry to be able to pass? It lost him Congress in the midterms. "Why didn't he codify Roe into law?" He couldn't. The supermajority only passed the ACA because all of the Dems agreed with it, and not all of them would support blanket nationwide legalization of late-term abortions. "He didn't codify gay rights into law -" HIS SUPREME COURT STRUCK DOWN THAT PART OF THE DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT WHEN HE WAS A LAME DUCK. THAT IS WHY THE SUPREME COURT IS IMPORTANT. I was in my twenties and openly bisexual, with a girlfriend. The absolute infants screaming about neoliberalism today were in elementary or middle school. They have no idea how good they have it, because not even Trump has been able to resurrect DOMA.

And here's the thing. Even if Obama really had been a populist hero, a living avatar of hope and change, every politician has to compromise. The much-vaunted El Sayed is already softening his stances, just like I thought he would. Hong backed off her previous statements (and no doubt would have done so even more if she won), and it wasn't enough to get her elected. Troy Jackson is white and he's going to lose because he's a pugilistic moron who's Groping Platner's bestie, but even he will probably be conciliatory about his positions closer to the election.

HOW DARE YOU LEAVE THIS IN THE TAGS

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if you are CO-CHAIR OF THE DSA, a political party that has made palestine its ENTIRE PLATFORM for the past THREE YEARS—yes, i expect you to have knowledge of the stages of the peace process. if you want people to listen to your solutions, i expect you to know what has and has not already been tried, and to know why you would or wouldn't have been happy with the major proposals made at each major step. including at camp david in 2000.

In 1993, the Oslo Accords were signed, creating the framework for a future Palestinian state. In 1995, Oslo II was signed, which divided the West Bank into three parts: Area A, Area B, and Area C. Area A is under full Palestinian control. Area B is under Palestinian civil control with Israeli security. And Area C is under full Israeli control. (It also divided Gaza into Areas A, B, and C. Gaza is supposed to be Area A, but due to a little thing known as "the government in charge of Gaza killed a thousand Israelis in one day", there is substantial Israeli presence.) Jewish Israelis are barred from entering Area A, for their own safety. (Arab Israelis are also theoretically barred, but this ban isn't enforced as strictly.) Area A includes most of the West Bank's population.

This was supposed to be temporary, renegotiated after five years.

So, five years pass, and Clinton gets together the leader of Israel, Ehud Barak, and the leader of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, at Camp David to talk it out.

The Israelis really, really, want peace. Ehud Barak is begging for a deal.

As Robert Malley and Hussein Agha write in an article fairly critical of Israel and Barak, "Barak was eager for a deal, wanted it achieved during Clinton’s term in office, and had surrounded himself with some of Israel’s most peace-minded politicians." Malley and Agha continue later that "If there is one issue that Israelis agree on, it is that Barak broke every conceivable taboo and went as far as any Israeli prime minister had gone or could go". They criticize him for, seemingly, being too flexible and acquiescent: "Yet, at the same time, he gave clear hints that Israel was willing to show more flexibility if Arafat was prepared to “contemplate” the endgame" (in a negative context). According to them Barak made massive concessions: sovereignty over all Arab sectors of East Jerusalem, a Palestinian state in over 90 percent of the West Bank with land swaps to help compensate. These were huge and changing. According to them, Arafat demanded sovereignty over the Temple Mount, as opposed to Israel's proposal for Palestinian "permanent custodianship" -- the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism (it now has the Al-Aqsa Compound on top of it), was to be in Palestinian hands, and that was a red line for him.

"Barak apparently took the view that, faced with a sufficiently attractive proposal and an appropriately unattractive alternative, the Palestinians would have no choice but to say yes. In effect, each successive Palestinian “no” led to the next best Israeli assessment of what, in their right minds, the Palestinians couldn’t turn down." Agha and Malley write. This was to be a dangerous mistake. Arafat turned down offer after offer after offer, making no counter-proposals and suggesting, contrary to the archeological, historical, and even Muslim record, that the Second Temple was in Nablus. (Previously, I have referenced him as saying it was in Hebron; this was in error, and I apologize for saying so. I do not know how the two got mixed up in my mind.) Shockingly, this did not suggest to Barak and the Israeli negotiating team that he was a reliable partner.

In late September 2000, a few months after the talks collapsed, Ariel Sharon, the leader of the right-wing party Likud (who would later unilaterally withdraw from Gaza, paving the way for Hamas' rule, but that's another story), visited the Temple Mount. Again: this is the holiest site in Judaism, and is, as basically all accounts agree, the site of the destroyed Second Temple. Sharon did not pray there. Sharon did not do much of anything there. He merely existed on the Temple Mount as a Jew.

That is what started the Second Intifada (which was, at best, tolerated by Arafat), in which over a thousand Jews died. A Jew existing on the holiest site in Judaism.

As Hussein and Agha continue, in late December, in the middle of the Second Intifada, Clinton and Barak made yet another proposal, which they summarize as follows: "Palestine would have sovereignty over 94 to 96 percent of the West Bank and it would as well have land belonging to pre-1967 Israel equivalent to another 1 to 3 percent of West Bank territory. Palestinian refugees would have the right to return to their homeland in historic Palestine, a right that would guarantee their unrestricted ability to live in Palestine while subjecting their absorption into Israel to Israel’s sovereign decision. In Jerusalem, all that is Arab would be Palestinian, all that is Jewish would be Israeli. Palestine would exercise sovereignty over the Haram [Temple Mount/Har HaBayit] and Israel over the Western Wall[.]"

Israel gave and gave and gave so much, and what it got in return was suicide bombings.

That is the environment in which Sharon came to power. That is, in many ways, what destroyed the Israeli left and its promise of peace. Because they tried peace, they tried so very, very, hard for peace, they gave up so much that no one else would be expected to give up -- and what they got in return was death and terror and fear. That is what Israelis think of when they hear intifada.

And I am not excusing Benjamin Netanyahu or his actions, nor the abandonment of the peace process, nor Israel's admittedly heavy-handed response to the Second Intifada.

But if you don't understand why Israelis are skeptical of peace, if you don't understand the cause of this view, if you don't understand what caused the collapse of the peace talks -- why the hell should I listen to you? Why should I care?

You don't need to know the precise details of the negotiations. What you need to know is this:

Reading diplomatic documents, it was a fairly regular occurrence that Palestinians would refuse to participate in something, Israelis/Zionist organizations would get all the talking time and ability to make their case with very little pushback, the people making decisions would (predictably) make decisions that aligned more with Zionist interests, and Palestinians would complain about how it was biased and they'd boycott the next one.