US Democratic Senator Mark Kelly has said he will “seriously consider” running for president in 2028 as he battles the Trump administration over a video in which he urged military personnel to refuse illegal orders.
The Arizona senator, who was accused of “seditious behaviour” by Donald Trump over the November clip, said he and his wife, Gabrielle Giffords, received “many” death threats after the president’s comments.
“We get them on a weekly basis now,” he told BBC Newsnight. “We had to get security to protect us 24 hours a day.”
Asked if he was considering a White House run, the retired Navy captain said he was considering it “because we’re in some seriously challenging times”.
He might have to clarify a lot of his stances to get widespread support. For examples,
he opposed the Republicans tax bill giving cuts to the rich, but he has no comments on Kamala’s proposed unrealized gains tax for the rich
he has a 100% scorecard from reproductive freedom advocates, but exactly how far he supports bodily autonomy and by extension trans rights is unknown
Sadly one thing he has been clear and consistent on is when the war in gaza began several years ago, he supported aiding Israel and moving a carrier group to threaten Iran and Houthis into deescelating. He still as recent as January promises to continue “aiding” Israel despite acknowledging the carnage.
Honestly, I don’t like the idea. But he’s a little better than Newsom and he’s 10,000x better than Trump.
Yeah, he’s not perfect, let’s just elect Trump for the third time.
You right now:
Primaries are picking. If you think your opinion matters more than tens of millions of people it’s a you problem.
Bender is poking fun at how we threw the 2024 election when millions of people who voted for Biden in 2020 did not show up for Harris, which is relevant because of how I nitpicked Kelly’s stances.
Kamala lost because she abandoned her voters. She told her own base to pound sand while fruitlessly trying to appease Republicans. The voters didn’t “not show up.” She simply made herself not their candidate anymore. It’s a fools’ errand to blame voters, as they’re not an individual you can actually hold accountable. Blaming voters for not voting for your terrible candidate is like blaming consumers for not buying shitty overpriced items at a store. You can whine, “well you have to buy something somewhere anyway!” But that’s just unproductive whining.
I think the only unpopular stance she had was on Israel and even thats only a few percentage points, about the same as those concerned with the economy among those who voted for Biden but not Harris. SOURCE
Do you have any examples of policies that you think made Harris a worse choice than Trump?
I think she did a poor job of saying what she brought to the table. I understand not wanting to throwJoe under the bus, but opening some daylight on policy would have given her a chance to deflect the affordability problems the last months of Biden had, for example.
She had a campaign website which is no longer up and it detailed every stance very clearly. One of my favorite parts was a proposed Unrealized Gains Tax on amounts over $1M which would cripple income for billionaires, removing the cap on social security so that the rich payed their share, and no tax inceases on anyone who made less than $400k.
There was a large orchestrated effort to keep the conversation off of those important topics, though. Including social media psyops, such as giving lower priority and exposure to DNC on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok.
The news surrounding her and her campaign advertising were generally pretty ass, though, yeah.
First, you can cut that shit right out with your leading question of “was she worse than Trump.” That isn’t how a large portion of the electorate acts, thinks, and believes. Some vote on utilitarian ethics. Some vote on respect for persons. You can’t just whine, stamp your feet, and pretend that utilitarianism is the only way to vote. You’re trying to hand waive away an branch of moral philosophy that has centuries of scholarly work behind it. If you view voting as simply an either/or choice, sure, Kamala was the only choice. If you view voting as an endorsement of candidate, then it’s perfectly valid to not vote for a candidate simply because you consider their actions to be morally abominable. The other guy being worse doesn’t change that.
She abandoned Palestinian Americans. The strongest defense of trans people she could offer “she would follow the law.” She cozied up with the Cheneys and offered no real policies that would move the needle on wealth inequality. And she couldn’t even offer a robust plan on how to protect abortion rights. And she gaslit everyone on the economy, telling people to believe the inflation figures and not their own lying eyes.
And before you claim that utilitarianism is the only valid voting philosophy, realize that is not how our own government behaves. We’ve literally vaporized millions of innocent civilians over the decades. The justification has always been, “well, they supported the evil regime and their evil actions.” Yet every dictator has come to power on the backs of people who thought they were the lesser evil. Hell, almost every Republican thinks Trump is a monster, but they vote for him because they consider him the lesser evil. I’m sure we incinerated thousands of Iraqis who voted for Saddam because he was the lesser evil on the ballot.
Vote how you want. If you view voting as a utilitarian exercise, so be it. But part of living in a democracy is recognizing that other people can have different belief systems and ways of life. Your way is not the only way. You believe that the ends always justify the means. Others recognize that as a road to Hell.
The Biden administration she was Vice President of had Trans cabinet member and judges appointed, the most LGBT+ administration in US history.
Biden protected the ranks and jobs of LGBT government employees and servicemembers attacked by the previous Trump admin including reinstatements. They also signed the respect for marriage act which gave protections for Gay Marriage.
No matter how you expect the electorate thinks, there were two options and the people of the US collectively made the wrong choice, blame falling on the few million who could have changed the outcome.
Also, Palestine does not have the emotional pull in the real world that Lemmy thinks it does. A lot of people simply choose not to have awareness or care about the middle east.
Being willing to throw an election is one of the only tools voters actually have to fight fascism. It’s the only way to prevent a bait-and-switch candidate. If you’re not willing to potentially lose an election when your candidate betrays you, future candidates will betray you every time. You’ve told them that you’re perfectly fine with being betrayed. You’ve proven yourself a spineless cuck that will let people walk all over you.
Actions have consequences. Voting has consequences. And Trump isn’t the worst possible leader out there. He’s a monster, but there are many gradations of monster. There are far worse monsters out there waiting to be elected. If you’re not ever willing to walk away from a traitor candidate in the general election, you guarantee that the Democrats will just keep sliding to the right forever. Nominating a corporate Dem in 2028 will almost certainly see another Republican win. But even on the thin chance they do win, electing a corporate Dem in 2028 guarantees someone even worse than Trump winning in 2032.
We’ve degenerated so far precisely because Democrats don’t take responsibility for their votes and will just blindly vote for whatever corporate tool is placed in front of them. It’s the political version of the “next quarter” thinking that plagues corporate America. All that matters is the election today. Don’t think about the long term consequences. Focus only on today, even if it hurts you in the long term. Trump is the result of decades of Dems kicking the can down the road, holding their nose, and voting for the lesser evil.
Notice, we’re only starting to see some progressives gain traction in the party after Democrats have suffered badly at the polls. There has been real change at the DNC. That and candidates like Mamdani would have been completely impossible if Trump hadn’t been elected. It’s only when the old guard loses horribly and has to run away in shame that the opportunity arises for new voices to take the reins of the party.
There are people in concentration camps, and some who have been murdered. China might take over Taiwan. Ukraine has lost many more people than it would’ve, given more support. The Gazan people might wind up displaced in favor of Trump resorts.
None of them volunteered to be martyrs for social democracy. Tell them how much worse we could have it. People who are so quick to sacrifice others instead of doing the work to build a better world get no claim to moral righteousness. If people want social democrats, that’s what the primary process is for. You don’t need to punish them for choosing wrongly. As a parent of five I can tell you punishment doesn’t motivate anyone to do the right thing — it motivates them to remove your ability to punish them.
The more I reread your words, the more I reject your vainglorious recklessness. You must do what you can with the means you are given for the situation you are in.
I hear you, and I understand, but also in that same pragmatic vein, we stand at a crossroads where without a coalition with the left we have no path forward. The right can’t seem to articulate any kind of clear concept of what would bring them on board except hurting more people. The left at least has the advantage of expressing a clear set of demands, none of which are particularly objectionable. Difficult, yes, possibly unachievable in a time frame that would satisfy them, but not objectively evil, which is more than I can say for the voting base of the right at this point. We have a choice to try to win back the left, or to try to make ourselves attractive to those who are at this point actively voting for fascism and potentially for mass genocide. Are we not being just as obstinate with our insistence on political centrism that we too are allowing the right to engage in atrocity after atrocity?
I’m not advocating voting for candidates who “can win the general election” in primaries. Vote for social democrats there and let the general election fall where it must. The more social democrats we get in the party, the stronger their influence will be and that is how we drag the party to the left. But when it comes to the general, the most milquetoast corporatist democrat is better than right-wing outright fascism.
Only if you only care about the short term. And then short term thinking is what has got us to this point.
In your opinion. An opinion you’re no more willing to budge on than the leftist is willing to compromise their position that any further concession to the right is tantamount to endorsing their atrocities. That someone willing to “reach across the aisle” at this point is doing little more than consenting to crimes committed in their name. The leftist and the liberal are standing equally on their beliefs and their principles, and both are just as unwilling to compromise. Can you truly say either one is more responsible for dividing the opposition to the fascists than the other? If you truly believe that voting for anyone but Trump is worth whatever price it takes, then you also believe there’s no harm in endorsing a more left leaning candidate no? Unless you truly believe more Democrats are willing to permit crimes against humanity than there are leftists willing to find an acceptable compromise. If that’s the case, the United States of America has already fallen too far to save.
“Letting Trump win fights fascism.”
You think the voters are that smart?
So basically, just another dem. I’ll vote for whoever wins the primary, but he probably wouldn’t be my first choice.