Why Do You Have To Be A Deal-Breaker?
And, of course, this is not just a matter of time, but of principle. Ethico-politically, everyone has, and should have, a line they won't cross, a deal-breaker. For any leftist of any kind, there is some issue that would immediately stop them cold from voting for a Democratic candidate who held it.
To reprise a point that Conor Friedersdorf made quite sharply here and here, if we were faced with Democratic and Republican candidates who both favored criminalizing abortion, or inter-racial and same-sex marriage, or the teaching of Darwinian evolution, or a preventative nuclear attack on Beijing (pick your deal-breaker), then, no matter what their positions were on every other issue, a whole bunch--most, I dare say--of today's "Must-vote-for-Joe" crew would refuse to vote for either and would urge others to refuse that choice as well. And of those who still thought it was necessary to VBNMW, very nearly none would deny the legitimate argument, let alone castigate the high moral irresponsibility, of those who refused to do so.
VBNMW implicitly has its deal-breaker: being a Republican. But that's a hollow criterion that cannot hold, even for those who promote it. At some point, in some instance, the question "Don't you prefer the better to the worse?" dissolves in the face of: "Are you really good with that?"
The difference between me and Bernie, Noam, and The Nation's SDS-ers is that they find no deal-breaking that in Joe Biden, in the Democratic party, or in the electoral system itself, while I find a slew. (Gotta wonder what it would take.)
Indeed, for me and many others, not just a certain number of his policies but the whole of Joe Biden's/the Democratic party's policy paradigm is a deal-breaker.
But let's pick just one.
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